I learned a lot from your presentation. I didn’t even realize the complexity of learning reading/phonics that occurred in the early primary grades. I really enjoyed how you demonstrated a lot of the techniques that are mentioned in our text – such as repetitive readings, echo readings, and phonemic practice – it was nice to see all of those methods in practice. Your introduction, lesson, and conclusion were all very clear and your ideas were very well thought out – you included a little bit of something for all of the different learning styles. Well Done. You work well as a team.
This was a great lesson idea. You utilized a topic that children would have prior knowledge about and would be relevant since most children have experienced friendships. You covered the lesson in so many ways: choral reading, echoed reading, repeated reading, etc. You clapped syllables and had students hold up fingers for number of syllables. At all times the students were engaged and you switched things around before you lost anyone’s attention, which is really important at the primary level. You incorporated several learning styles- kinesthetic, visual, linguistic, musical (clapping), interpersonal and intrapersonal. I’d definitely use your lesson. I’ll be having a grade 1 class for 405, so this will come in very handy. I especially like that the students create their own picture book finishing with their personal picture of what friends do.
The lesson like yours makes me sad. Why is this age of kindergarten innocence goes away so quickly? Again, when it comes to teaching primary grades I have a hard time to relate to. Everything what you did seems to be so simple, but at the same time is so complex. The time spend in kindergarten is a milestone for any five year old and this is why it is so crucial how the children feel in that new environment compare to that what they learn. On that note, I thoroughly enjoyed the worm atmosphere you have created in the classroom. Also, I still do remember the way my son Konrad has craved for a friendship in kindergarten so your theme and activity to pair with another classmate was right on. I wish I had memorized that little quote about friendship that you have started your lesson with. You’ve got my attention on the spot.
This lesson really captured my imagination. It is wonderful to see how gently, and carefully that a primary reading lesson can be implemented. Clear expectations, timing, and opportunities to demonstrate understanding were present throughout the lesson. The format also supported learners with reading disabliities, and allows them to investigate the concepts in a non-threatening, inclusive environment. I especially liked your idea for extending the lesson with the word creation activity. Creative expression is the key to engaging,celebrating, and acknowledging learner differences
I absolutely loved your presentation!! I loved how you started it off with a poem and sang a song. You all were very well prepared and your lesson was very engaging. You guys had a lot of excellent things going on in your lesson. I thought it was a great idea to use the theme of friends when teaching students about social development. I would definitely do this lesson with my class. I was very engaged in you lesson presentation so I can only imagine how engaged kindergartens would be. I loved that there were so many little activities and each activity built on the next step. This is exactly how I like to teach!! This is such a fun way to teach kindergarten students how to read and how to make connections. I would love to teach kindergarten or grade one so this lesson makes me miss teaching so much. Thanks so much for doing this lesson. You all did an excellent job!!!
Great introduction to the lesson, you made it very clear what was coming and what aspects of the lesson we should really watch for, i felt this was very useful for us to know what was being highlighted. The lesson was very thorough, with many different activities to engage the students.
I have not been in a kindergarten classroom since I was in it myself which was a very long time ago. But watching your lesson made me want to teach kindergarten. Your lesson was so well organized with so many well thought out activities that flowed so well together that it made teaching kindergarten look so easy. Your group had activity after activity that I’m sure would have been so well suited for kindergarten students. I loved your explanation of why you make the students stand up and point for an extended period of time and it makes total sense. I never realized how important those subtle changes and transitions can be when they are all added up throughout the course of an entire year. Excellent job!
Your lesson was clearly well-planned and prepared. It was fun to put myself in a kindergartener’s shoes and listen to a little story. :) You were all very enthusiastic, which kept us all engaged. I’ve taught some primary, but like many others have mentioned, I realized again the complexity of teaching reading to young children. There is so much potential for every action in the classroom to be full of learning, and you did that! Thanks for modeling a great lesson—experiencing it honestly made me feel more confident for TOCing in those early grades.
Similar to what Justyna said, being a high school teacher, I have a difficult time relating to the material and realizing how much a five or six year old has to learn in one year. Your explanations and demonstrations were great as far as I can tell. The theme was excellent; something that I know comes up again and again through out a child’s life. What a great way to reinforce it.
I liked the reminder of reading stories over and over to children this age as they don't get bored with stories and it can give them practice as well as increasing understanding of the story. The popsicle stick idea for partenering was great as it promotes so many thing including problem solving to find your partner and group and partner interaction. The preparation for the presentation was great and you showed how to use the story and words in a variety of ways which promotes greater understanding.
I found your lesson to be very engaging and liked the way that you introduced the experience with background information on the Kindergarten classroom. I myself am familiar with this age group, but think that it would have been very beneficial to hear that “they enjoy repetition” for example, if my experience had been with other grades. I thought that your visuals were fantastic, and that they demonstrated very appropriate tools for teaching children how to read. (The pocket chart, cards and book). I loved how you showed us how students could personalize their own version of the book on friends that you read. I think that this idea could lead to a greater number of repeat readings (therefore the student could expand their word recognition and reading fluency) and I also enjoy the way that it makes the reading experience more enjoyable and perhaps less intimidating for children.
Thank you! I will definitely use your partner sorting technique with my prospective students! (I loved the shapes on the coloured popsicle sticks – what a great way to further integrate curriculum!)
Erin. M. Class 6 Group 2 Friends: Wow I learned so much from this lesson, especially with the variety of ways to read and comprehend the words in the little story. You were all well prepared and presented the lesson smoothly. I enjoyed how it moved so quickly and easily through the variety of strategies. This will definitely be a hit in any of the lower grades as it keep the kids on their toes and learning. In addition, your lesson made a lot of methods discussed in class and in the text book a much more clearly for us visual learners. I am looking forward to using many of the strategies from your lesson in my ESL classrooms.
This was a wonderful lesson! It is evident that you worked well together and that you thought about each step. I really enjoyed how fluid your lesson was. It might have been good to avoid words like exercise if your goal was phonetic reading, but I can appreciate having children become familiar with more complex words. I loved that you allowed each child to make their own book. This is an excellent way to build fluency an have children believe in themselves as readers. But, and this is less of a comment than it is a question, should we have children spell correctly at such a young age or colour in? I really grapple with this one as my kindergarten practicum SA was very one sided. Spelling out and erasers were completely forbidden. From her perspective, spelling out for them took part of the learning process away and encouraged perfectionism. This would weaken creativity and risk taking in their writing. And I won’t get into the colouring... I don’t mean to go on a tangent, but it is an interesting debate in primary classrooms. Anyway, I also really liked the way you sorted children and how you allowed opportunity for movement. This thoughtfulness increases the chance that all learners, including the wigglers, will be successful. Thank you for demonstrating a realistic lesson. It reminded me of how much thought goes into teaching kindergarten and how inspiring it is when everything comes together. Well done!
This lesson was very enjoyable to see and be a part of. I taught a Kindergarten class in my last classroom and I saw a lot of things that I also did in my classroom such as clapping the syllables and annunciating all the words that are new and discussing them with the class. Reading within the Kindergarten classroom is so important for students of this age. They really need to hear new words over again to understand meaning. It was fun to see how you read the book to the class, as if we actually were in Kindergarten. I could totally relate to you when you were reading that book . Also, using you finger as a pointer so that students can follow along with the words is really important good for them. They can see what words are being read, and this helps with word recognition and understanding meaning. When they see the picture next to the word, they are able to remember the meaning. I also find it very helpful to first read the poem aloud to the class (as the teacher), then having them read one line after you, and then reading along with you.
Your presentation was truly multi-level. I especially enjoyed the various activities you demonstrated that could be used as extensions of using a read-aloud book. It was an excellent hook to randomize partners first, and then share with their new ‘friend’ what they did with their friends. It was a great idea to get students that don’t normally interact to find common interests. After all, school is not only about teaching how to read, but fostering social relationships. I also liked how you tied your ending extension activity to the brainstorm at the beginning. Students could create their own page of the book by writing and drawing what they enjoyed doing with their own friends. I think this adds extra ownership with what students were reading. I must acknowledge whomever drew and wrote your friendship book. (It looked like it was hand drawn). You have incredible artistic skill! A lot of components and activities were carried out in your presentation, but everything flowed smoothly and every group member knew their responsibilities. Good Job!
Focus on letter recognition and phonemic awareness through the activation of prior knowledge.
I really like the preamble about the lesson at the start which explained the purpose, the prep and the theory behind the lesson. That’s nice I found that really helpful, more so then detailed instructions on how the lesson should be enabled.
The simulation was also interesting. I appreciated again how there wasn’t a lot of commentary on what should happen in the classroom, but rather the commentary was on why this particular activity was being organized in a particular way. It was nice also to see that the group was very clear that what they were doing was not the only way that this type of lesson could be done.
I thought this lesson was really well done. I felt like I was in a kindergarten class. The presentation and flow of the lesson felt natural. I enjoyed the different styles you used to make the lesson dynamic - the story was a great way to tie everything together and I see how you could use this as the running theme for the class.
This was a great lesson for me as an aspiring early childhood educator. I have learned that grade one and kindergarten are quite different in how you teach. While grade on students can pay attention to one thing for 15 minutes, this lesson showed us that in kindergarten 5 minutes per activity and then more on. I liked how we were given so many ideas about what we could do and where we could take the lesson. Overall just a really great lesson.
Great job at making us experience a real kindergarten feel! I enjoyed the use of the space in the classroom - we should not be restricted to desk at any grade level, but for sure not in kindergarten! Thank you for also keeping us interactive - when a lesson is simple, it is sometimes difficult to keep "know-it-all" students engaged. However, with the group work that you assigned, it allowed students to discuss at many different levels of understanding. Finally, I very much appreciated how each word that was being used was being pointed at. I know this is a simple concept, but younger students need to SEE the teacher reading the words and experience the fact that the spaces between letters are word-breaks. Thank you for creating an interactive learning experience!
Kindergarten Friends – Christine, Denise, David, Laura It was very obvious that this group put a lot of effort into its presentation. The work to create a book and illustrations for the lesson was awesome. The book and pictures tide the lesson to the theory nicely and we as students got to see how the teaching was modeled while we were also participants in the lesson. It is always fun to let loose and once and in a while just sit back and be kids and learn. The topic is both a reading topic but it is also in away liked to social justice in helping students learn the sharing principle and how to act with friends. I would use this lesson in a K class.
22 comments:
I learned a lot from your presentation. I didn’t even realize the complexity of learning reading/phonics that occurred in the early primary grades. I really enjoyed how you demonstrated a lot of the techniques that are mentioned in our text – such as repetitive readings, echo readings, and phonemic practice – it was nice to see all of those methods in practice. Your introduction, lesson, and conclusion were all very clear and your ideas were very well thought out – you included a little bit of something for all of the different learning styles. Well Done. You work well as a team.
This was a great lesson idea. You utilized a topic that children would have prior knowledge about and would be relevant since most children have experienced friendships. You covered the lesson in so many ways: choral reading, echoed reading, repeated reading, etc. You clapped syllables and had students hold up fingers for number of syllables. At all times the students were engaged and you switched things around before you lost anyone’s attention, which is really important at the primary level. You incorporated several learning styles- kinesthetic, visual, linguistic, musical (clapping), interpersonal and intrapersonal. I’d definitely use your lesson. I’ll be having a grade 1 class for 405, so this will come in very handy. I especially like that the students create their own picture book finishing with their personal picture of what friends do.
The lesson like yours makes me sad. Why is this age of kindergarten innocence goes away so quickly? Again, when it comes to teaching primary grades I have a hard time to relate to. Everything what you did seems to be so simple, but at the same time is so complex. The time spend in kindergarten is a milestone for any five year old and this is why it is so crucial how the children feel in that new environment compare to that what they learn. On that note, I thoroughly enjoyed the worm atmosphere you have created in the classroom. Also, I still do remember the way my son Konrad has craved for a friendship in kindergarten so your theme and activity to pair with another classmate was right on. I wish I had memorized that little quote about friendship that you have started your lesson with. You’ve got my attention on the spot.
The quote was, "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me, and be my friend." - Albert Camus.
This lesson really captured my imagination. It is wonderful to see how gently, and carefully that a primary reading lesson can be implemented. Clear expectations, timing, and opportunities to demonstrate understanding were present throughout the lesson.
The format also supported learners with reading disabliities, and allows them to investigate the concepts in a non-threatening, inclusive environment.
I especially liked your idea for extending the lesson with the word creation activity. Creative expression is the key to engaging,celebrating, and acknowledging learner differences
I absolutely loved your presentation!! I loved how you started it off with a poem and sang a song. You all were very well prepared and your lesson was very engaging. You guys had a lot of excellent things going on in your lesson. I thought it was a great idea to use the theme of friends when teaching students about social development. I would definitely do this lesson with my class. I was very engaged in you lesson presentation so I can only imagine how engaged kindergartens would be. I loved that there were so many little activities and each activity built on the next step. This is exactly how I like to teach!! This is such a fun way to teach kindergarten students how to read and how to make connections. I would love to teach kindergarten or grade one so this lesson makes me miss teaching so much. Thanks so much for doing this lesson. You all did an excellent job!!!
Great introduction to the lesson, you made it very clear what was coming and what aspects of the lesson we should really watch for, i felt this was very useful for us to know what was being highlighted. The lesson was very thorough, with many different activities to engage the students.
I have not been in a kindergarten classroom since I was in it myself which was a very long time ago. But watching your lesson made me want to teach kindergarten. Your lesson was so well organized with so many well thought out activities that flowed so well together that it made teaching kindergarten look so easy. Your group had activity after activity that I’m sure would have been so well suited for kindergarten students. I loved your explanation of why you make the students stand up and point for an extended period of time and it makes total sense. I never realized how important those subtle changes and transitions can be when they are all added up throughout the course of an entire year. Excellent job!
Your lesson was clearly well-planned and prepared. It was fun to put myself in a kindergartener’s shoes and listen to a little story. :) You were all very enthusiastic, which kept us all engaged. I’ve taught some primary, but like many others have mentioned, I realized again the complexity of teaching reading to young children. There is so much potential for every action in the classroom to be full of learning, and you did that! Thanks for modeling a great lesson—experiencing it honestly made me feel more confident for TOCing in those early grades.
Similar to what Justyna said, being a high school teacher, I have a difficult time relating to the material and realizing how much a five or six year old has to learn in one year. Your explanations and demonstrations were great as far as I can tell. The theme was excellent; something that I know comes up again and again through out a child’s life. What a great way to reinforce it.
I liked the reminder of reading stories over and over to children this age as they don't get bored with stories and it can give them practice as well as increasing understanding of the story. The popsicle stick idea for partenering was great as it promotes so many thing including problem solving to find your partner and group and partner interaction. The preparation for the presentation was great and you showed how to use the story and words in a variety of ways which promotes greater understanding.
I found your lesson to be very engaging and liked the way that you introduced the experience with background information on the Kindergarten classroom. I myself am familiar with this age group, but think that it would have been very beneficial to hear that “they enjoy repetition” for example, if my experience had been with other grades.
I thought that your visuals were fantastic, and that they demonstrated very appropriate tools for teaching children how to read. (The pocket chart, cards and book). I loved how you showed us how students could personalize their own version of the book on friends that you read. I think that this idea could lead to a greater number of repeat readings (therefore the student could expand their word recognition and reading fluency) and I also enjoy the way that it makes the reading experience more enjoyable and perhaps less intimidating for children.
Thank you! I will definitely use your partner sorting technique with my prospective students! (I loved the shapes on the coloured popsicle sticks – what a great way to further integrate curriculum!)
Erin. M.
Class 6 Group 2 Friends:
Wow I learned so much from this lesson, especially with the variety of ways to read and comprehend the words in the little story. You were all well prepared and presented the lesson smoothly. I enjoyed how it moved so quickly and easily through the variety of strategies. This will definitely be a hit in any of the lower grades as it keep the kids on their toes and learning. In addition, your lesson made a lot of methods discussed in class and in the text book a much more clearly for us visual learners. I am looking forward to using many of the strategies from your lesson in my ESL classrooms.
This was a wonderful lesson! It is evident that you worked well together and that you thought about each step. I really enjoyed how fluid your lesson was. It might have been good to avoid words like exercise if your goal was phonetic reading, but I can appreciate having children become familiar with more complex words. I loved that you allowed each child to make their own book. This is an excellent way to build fluency an have children believe in themselves as readers. But, and this is less of a comment than it is a question, should we have children spell correctly at such a young age or colour in? I really grapple with this one as my kindergarten practicum SA was very one sided. Spelling out and erasers were completely forbidden. From her perspective, spelling out for them took part of the learning process away and encouraged perfectionism. This would weaken creativity and risk taking in their writing. And I won’t get into the colouring... I don’t mean to go on a tangent, but it is an interesting debate in primary classrooms.
Anyway, I also really liked the way you sorted children and how you allowed opportunity for movement. This thoughtfulness increases the chance that all learners, including the wigglers, will be successful.
Thank you for demonstrating a realistic lesson. It reminded me of how much thought goes into teaching kindergarten and how inspiring it is when everything comes together. Well done!
This lesson was very enjoyable to see and be a part of. I taught a Kindergarten class in my last classroom and I saw a lot of things that I also did in my classroom such as clapping the syllables and annunciating all the words that are new and discussing them with the class. Reading within the Kindergarten classroom is so important for students of this age. They really need to hear new words over again to understand meaning. It was fun to see how you read the book to the class, as if we actually were in Kindergarten. I could totally relate to you when you were reading that book . Also, using you finger as a pointer so that students can follow along with the words is really important good for them. They can see what words are being read, and this helps with word recognition and understanding meaning. When they see the picture next to the word, they are able to remember the meaning. I also find it very helpful to first read the poem aloud to the class (as the teacher), then having them read one line after you, and then reading along with you.
Your presentation was truly multi-level. I especially enjoyed the various activities you demonstrated that could be used as extensions of using a read-aloud book. It was an excellent hook to randomize partners first, and then share with their new ‘friend’ what they did with their friends. It was a great idea to get students that don’t normally interact to find common interests. After all, school is not only about teaching how to read, but fostering social relationships. I also liked how you tied your ending extension activity to the brainstorm at the beginning. Students could create their own page of the book by writing and drawing what they enjoyed doing with their own friends. I think this adds extra ownership with what students were reading. I must acknowledge whomever drew and wrote your friendship book. (It looked like it was hand drawn). You have incredible artistic skill! A lot of components and activities were carried out in your presentation, but everything flowed smoothly and every group member knew their responsibilities. Good Job!
Friends….
Focus on letter recognition and phonemic awareness through the activation of prior knowledge.
I really like the preamble about the lesson at the start which explained the purpose, the prep and the theory behind the lesson. That’s nice I found that really helpful, more so then detailed instructions on how the lesson should be enabled.
The simulation was also interesting. I appreciated again how there wasn’t a lot of commentary on what should happen in the classroom, but rather the commentary was on why this particular activity was being organized in a particular way. It was nice also to see that the group was very clear that what they were doing was not the only way that this type of lesson could be done.
I thought this lesson was really well done. I felt like I was in a kindergarten class. The presentation and flow of the lesson felt natural. I enjoyed the different styles you used to make the lesson dynamic - the story was a great way to tie everything together and I see how you could use this as the running theme for the class.
This was a great lesson for me as an aspiring early childhood educator. I have learned that grade one and kindergarten are quite different in how you teach. While grade on students can pay attention to one thing for 15 minutes, this lesson showed us that in kindergarten 5 minutes per activity and then more on. I liked how we were given so many ideas about what we could do and where we could take the lesson. Overall just a really great lesson.
Great job at making us experience a real kindergarten feel! I enjoyed the use of the space in the classroom - we should not be restricted to desk at any grade level, but for sure not in kindergarten! Thank you for also keeping us interactive - when a lesson is simple, it is sometimes difficult to keep "know-it-all" students engaged. However, with the group work that you assigned, it allowed students to discuss at many different levels of understanding.
Finally, I very much appreciated how each word that was being used was being pointed at. I know this is a simple concept, but younger students need to SEE the teacher reading the words and experience the fact that the spaces between letters are word-breaks. Thank you for creating an interactive learning experience!
Kindergarten Friends – Christine, Denise, David, Laura
It was very obvious that this group put a lot of effort into its presentation. The work to create a book and illustrations for the lesson was awesome. The book and pictures tide the lesson to the theory nicely and we as students got to see how the teaching was modeled while we were also participants in the lesson. It is always fun to let loose and once and in a while just sit back and be kids and learn. The topic is both a reading topic but it is also in away liked to social justice in helping students learn the sharing principle and how to act with friends. I would use this lesson in a K class.
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