First Time Out: Reflection on My First Shared Reading Lesson

My shared reading lesson plan adequately addressed my objective and the standard of text-to-self connections. Through the use of real life pictures of my son’s bedtime routine, I was able to show the students how I made a text-to-self connection to the book, Time for Bed. This was also how I introduced the lesson to the students. In other words, this was also my anticipatory set for the lesson. I feel this was a strong anticipatory set because the looks on the student’s faces revealed those of very interested, engaged students. I was able to catch their attention through the use of the pictures.

When teaching the mini lessons, which consisted of teaching the blends SH, CH, WH and TH, I used words in the book and pointed to those words with the appropriate blends. This method was acceptable, however a more effective way of teaching this lesson would have been to have used flash cards with the blends on them and a correlating picture to help the visual students see the blend and a word with picture in which it was used.

I feel that I was knowledgeable of the subject matter and I showed evidence of this through my text-to-self personal example of my son’s bedtime routine. Additionally, I feel that my work with the whole class on coming up with some words that ended and started with the blends that we discussed was successful as seen through the student’s immediate and accurate responses. I feel this also shows proof of the effective communication between the students and myself.

My cooperating teacher did give me a worksheet that she had created for this lesson prior to class and I was able to successfully incorporate it into the lesson without advanced notice.

I feel it is safe to express that my closure for this lesson was nonexistent. I spoke about this in detail with my CT and we both agree. I did not really know how to close a lesson I guess, since in my course work after we “taught” our students (classmates) we just sort of stopped. I never realized this was or would be a problem until in the actual classroom. My CT was really great about this, giving me suggestions and then during one of her lessons the next time I was in her class, she modeled some examples of closure for me. I appreciated her help and this experience.