Sheltered Literacy Lesson Strategies

Entry #8

Strategies used in the sheltered lesson:

·         Lesson goal was clearly stated and was also written on the chart paper.

·         Students asked to recall reading strategies they knew, before reading.

·         Vocabulary from the text was discussed in different ways before reading.  Pictures were shown where these could illustrate a word, (e.g. bouquet); synonyms were given; a story example was used to give students the understanding of the word ‘resent’.

·         Connected to students’ culture by asking them to sing the Spanish song from the book.

·         Teacher read text aloud slowly and clearly.

·         During teacher/student discussions about comprehension, the teacher kept referring to the strategies that they were using and how this was beneficial to their understanding.

·         Teacher gave students clues from the author to help them infer meaning.

·         Teacher asked a variety of questions throughout the discussion.

·         Wait time.

·         Students applied their knowledge of the three reading strategies by identifying parts of the story where they used each strategy, and recording this on post-it notes.

·         Reading and writing connection: writing about sections of the story that matched with a comprehension strategy.

·         Use of the visualizer to show the text and highlight sections for discussion.

Comments

The teacher clearly stated the objective at the start of the lesson so that this was explicit to the class.  She activated their background knowledge of comprehension strategies before the lesson started by asked them to recall strategies they have used before, which really got them focused on these strategies.  She did an excellent job of front loading the unfamiliar vocabulary in a variety of ways to best aid student understanding of these new words.   The teacher sheltered the text by reading aloud to the class and stopping at phrases that needed discussion.  There were opportunities for teacher and students to discuss the text together to fully understand inferences.  The teacher did a good job at leading and directing this discussion and by asking a variety of questions to get the students thinking.  Many of the questions involved students using higher level thinking to engage with the text.  From the short video clips we saw, it seemed that the teacher was asking all the questions and the teacher did most of the talking at these times.  I would have liked to have seen more students involved at the discussion time, and trying to draw in some of the quieter students to ask their thoughts.  I would be interested to have seen the rest of the lesson components to know if the students had time to discuss the text with a partner as they read independently.  It is especially important for ELL students to have opportunities to talk, use the language of the text and to clarify their thinking about these inferences.  Using the post-it notes was a good idea for assessment to see how students were using each strategy to think about the text.  As the teacher said, those ‘I’m confused’ post-its make a productive start to the next lesson.  I wondered why the teacher did not choose inference as a strategy to put on one of the post-it notes, because this was the objective of the lesson.