Directed reading and thinking activity

Pre-assessment: At grade 3, the learners are able to gather ideas and analyze experience using a variety of ways. This means that they will be able to grasp the different things that happen in the story. At the same time, these learners also have the ability to comprehend the flow of a simple story including its key events.

Specific Objective: At the end of this lesson, students will be able to follow and understand the plot of a simple story by picking out who the main character is relative to the others.

Materials: Wait and See by Robert Munch and Martin Martchenko (1993).

Limits: Cultural diversity may mean that some children have a different idea of birthdays.

The concentration span of some of the children may run out in the course of the story making them to miss out on the lesson’s key objective..

Alternatives: If the text is unavailable to the whole class then I can make use of a projector that will make the text’s content legible to the whole class.

Evaluation: I can evaluate the progress of individual children by looking at the body language to see if they are interested in the story and participating actively in the reading.

Another way of evaluating the performance of the children during the lesson is by testing their ability to comprehend the particulars of the story.

Follow up: Since this is primarily a reading lesson, the most logical way to follow up is by means of asking relevant comprehension questions to be answered by the learners.

Remediation and Enrichment: Provided at the end of end of each lesson due to unique strategies.

Directed Reading and Thinking Activity

Summary of the story

This story “Wait and See” is about a little girl called Olivia. It is her birthday and her parents have invited her friends over for the party. When she gets the chance to blow the candles and make a wish, she inwardly wishes for snow. When she tells her father about this, he refutes saying it is not possible, being a summer day. To this she replies “wait and see.” By the time the party is over, it is heavily snowing and this is when her parents believe her wish and hence bring her another cake so that she can get rid of the snow. She instead wishes for rain and this too happens intensely. This prompts her mother to bring her another birthday cake to blow. At this point, she asks for sunshine and like the other wishes, this too gets granted. By this time she has noticed a trend and therefore decides to make a cake on her own and wish for money. It soon gets delivered home in a truck load but unfortunately it makes her parents to fight over it. This saddens her and she wishes for three babies instead, like all other wishes much to the surprise of her parents.

Personal reaction to the story

When I began to read the story I was excited by the fact that it is something the learners will identify with. First, the main character is a child and also, the things taking place are those that children can identify with such as having a birthday, making wishes and also the idea of consequences for wishes people make. The repetitive pattern of the story is great since it will make the learners feel like they are part of the story.

Grade 3

Pre-reading lesson plan

In the pre-reading lesson plan, the decision on how to plan the reading lesson is important in enhancing and promoting students learning.

Activating schema

I will jog up the memory of the students by asking them how many have got birthdays. The next question will be to ask them what happens in a birthday party. I expect them to mention that they have friends over, the presence of a cake and also the opening of gifts. This will set the mood for the reading activity that is a short story about Olivia’s birthday.

Vocabulary: The vocabulary words that I will select are those that appear in the story but are not ordinarily used by third grade three students in either speech or writing. The vocabulary words to be introduced are enormous, probably and yell. I will mention each word and then ask the students to do the same. Once they have the pronunciation right, i will define and then use each word in a simple sentence (which they can relate to) that captures the meaning.

Alternate Method: The use of simple images on charts that capture the meaning can be an alternate method. These images too should have objects that the learners can relate to. For ‘enormous’ I can use the picture of an elephant, verbally demonstrate ‘yelling’ and use clouds to show that illustrate the meaning of ‘probably’ (It will probably rain)

Students in need of Enrichment: For these students, more vivid communication may be needed and this may involve the use of more images and examples from the children’s immediate environment and also role-playing where meanings can be brought out through simulations by the teacher and a helper.

Grade 3

During reading plan

The first thing I will do is to introduce the story’s main character and the fact that we will see how her birthday went. From here, the members of the class on the order in which they will be reading in turns. This will ideally follow the seating arrangement that is present in the classroom. To ensure active listening and reading, I will play the role of a moderator, asking questions and giving pointers as to the direction the story is headed. The most appropriate moment for this is just before each wish she makes.

Review of the Concepts: To ensure that the learners’ minds are in tandem with the story’s flow, I will divide the classroom into five groups (in line with the five wishes). While we will read the whole story, each group will be assigned a selected portion and their task will be to explain to the rest of the class what is happening in the story at a given point in time. Other groups will be allowed to pose questions where uncertain. If the children have difficulty at any point, I will have to interject and explain to the whole class so as to ensure they are in tune with the story.

Review of Vocabulary: Each time one of the three vocabulary words appears in the story, I will interject and remind the class about the word. For a limited period, two or three can volunteer to use the word in a sentence.

Alternative methods: Members of the class can read in unison but I will be interjecting at the end of each wish so as to bring them up to speed with the progress of the story. Charts with images can again be used to explain vocabularies. For enrichment: The use of a skit, with the learners taking up different roles in the story will aid in enforcing the concept for those who may have missed it the first time.

Grade 3

After reading lesson plan

Remind the Learners Olivia’s story: briefly summarize the story that the learners went through in the previous session. This is because the learners have a short concentrations span and their minds may have already wandered.

Test their vocabulary: remind them of the three vocabulary words and randomly ask the members of the class to explain the meanings. I will need to encourage them to remember the meanings by giving a reward such as a smiley face sticker for those who get them right. To confirm that they have the meanings, I will randomly display the charts I used in the previous session and ask them to mention the vocabulary words. I will also ask them to use these words in sentences and also personally participate. The students who had been part of the enrichment and remedial sessions will be given top priority to participate in this session.

After testing and reiterating the vocabularies that were learnt in the previous session, I will ask simple questions about the story that was read. The learners will be allowed to consult with their text books since this is more of a comprehension session. For the questions that are difficult to answer, recall or contextualize, I will help by asking them to turn to a specific page or section where they can find the answers. Part of the comprehension will require the children to give their responses and also elaborate on the lessons that can be learnt about making wishes and their consequences.

In this part of class, I will also ask them to pin point the parts of the story where the vocabulary words appear. This should be simple for these third graders since I employed a lot of repetition of the vocabulary words in the reading session. This will be an extension of the vocabulary testing.

Work cited

Robert Munsch (Text) and Michael Martchenko (Art). Wait and See, Annick Press, Cengage Learning. (1993).