LESSON PLAN OUTLINE JMU Elementary Education Program

The following information should be included in the header of the lesson plan: Ashley Ostendorf Ms. Shannon Shuey, McSwain Elementary March 11, 2013, TIME March 4, 2013

A. "Dad, Jackie, and Me" A Comprehension Lesson Plan B. CONTEXT OF LESSON All components of comprehension are addressed in this lesson: activation of background or prior knowledge, asking questions throughout, modeling comprehension strategies, discussion, summarization, vocabulary introduction, sentence composing, and written response. This story about the historical baseball player, Jackie Robinson, is only an introduction (Day 1) of a larger unit about famous Americans. The second grade students have been participating in similar structured comprehension lessons every day this school year. They use the term comprehension to describe activities such as re-reading, predicting, using context clues to answer probing questions, and understanding the general sequence and events of certain stories. The students are read aloud to every day in multiple subjects, proving that they have the attention span to sit and listen to a story. I have witnessed the excitement in the student's reactions when being read to aloud, through their constant questioning and blurted out responses. Starting with the read aloud, I will be able to capture their attention, especially when stopping halfway through the story. When this has been done in the past, the students get more engaged and ask "what happens next!?" and say things like "I wish we could finish the story today!" After getting their interest in the story, they will have fun composing sentences from the story and creating free-ended written responses. I know that the students are capable of this because they have done this process with almost all of their previous read-alouds.. Comprehension lessons fit in the sequence of the curriculum in that children need to learn word patterns and general phonemic awareness in order to read and write quickly and accurately. As phonemic awareness and phonics is the basis of reading, it is important to remember that they are also components of reading, such as reading fluency, oral reading skills, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. Comprehensions lessons encourage active exploration and examination of word features and vocabulary that are within a students stage of literacy development. In terms of child development, my students have mastered the emergent and letter name alphabetic stages of orthographic development and are currently in the within word pattern stage. I have seen my students demonstrate universal meaning behind their writing, not just personal meaning. This demonstrates that they understand the concept of word and have an easier time writing as they can provide detail and express ideas in their writing. Because they are in the within word pattern developmental stage, they can spell most single syllable words correctly, along with most initial consonant digraphs and blends, proving that practice in free-writing is an exceptional way to teach reading and writing skills.

C. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Understand The student will understand that comprehension requires making, confirming, and revising predictions. The student will understand that they must attend to the details of the text in order to comprehend. The student will understand that historical references can be made in fictional books. Know The student will know the definitions of new vocabulary words: gloomy and clutched. The student will know the story's structure and sequence of events. The student will know general information about Jackie Robinson's accomplishments. Do The student will be able to use prior knowledge and information from the text to verbally predict information and to interpret pictures during and after the reading. The student will be able to imitate and combine the given sentences in their reading journals. The student will be able to create a written response to Jackie Robinson using a given sentence frame in their reading journals. The student will be able to ask and answer simple questions to demonstrate understanding of the main details and events in the text. D. ASSESSING LEARNING I have both form and informal assessments in this lesson to track their learning progress. To assess every student's comprehension strategies and level, I will collect their reading journals after they have completed their sentence composition and written response. The imitation portion of the sentence composition requires each student to write the sentence "This time, nobody seemed to notice" in a new way, but keep the same meaning. This assesses their ability to attend to details of the text, as well as general vocabulary checking. The students will also have to record a combination of the sentences: "My dad let me hold my ticket. I clutched it for dear life" into one single sentence. This assesses their ability to summarize and recollection of the main events in the text. The vocabulary words will be assessed at the end of the week, as they are part of their word study words. They will have to write them into their writing journals, as well as their definitions. To assess their knowledge of Jackie Robinson and sequence of events in the story, questions throughout such as "why do you think the Giants hated Jackie Robinson" and "What do you think it means to go "all the way" in baseball? will be discussed and answered in pairs throughout the reading. This verbal problem solving is a form of informal observation but will be affective in learning each student's comprehension strategies. In order to see if they are activating prior knowledge and experiences I will ask questions that would be personal to each student and ask for volunteers to share their answers. For example, I will make a connection on the page that talks about the boy's lucky pencil, and share with my class that I had a lucky hair tie when I was kid. I will then ask them if they have ever had anything that they thought would bring them good luck? This will allow for some students to personally connect with the story and will allow me to assess their ability to use prior knowledge to interpret things.

E. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING (and NATIONAL STANDARDS if required) 2.7 The student will expand vocabulary when reading 2.8 The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of fictional texts. a) Make and confirm predictions. b) Relate previous experiences to the main idea. c) Ask and answer questions about what is read. d) Locate information to answer questions. e) Describe characters, setting, and important events in fiction i) Draw conclusions based on the text. F. MATERIALS NEEDED Active listeners and learners! Reading journals (one per student) Pencils The book "Dad, Jackie, and Me" by Myron Uhlberg A marker Chart paper A baseball and baseball glove G. PROCEDURE a) Preparation of the learning environment I will make sure that the classroom is in order after we come back from recess while the students get themselves organized and read silently for a few minutes I will set my baseball and baseball glove on the shelf next to the reading rocking chair placed at the head of the reading carpet so that everyone will be able to see the props and the book. I will have read the story three-four times and have my questions planned and pages marked as a reminder to stop at the correct pages. I will have the imitate and combine sentences, as well as the sentence frame written out neatly on the chart paper. b) Engage -Introduction of the lesson I will ask the students what we have been learning about in history recently? They will tell me famous Americans. I will explain that we will be learning about a new, very important one today, named Jackie Robinson. I will refer to my props and as the students who they think Jackie Robinson could be? I will call on students with their hands up to make this prediction. I will say those are all fantastic predictions! Let's read this exciting story to find out! Now, I will say, "This story is a really really cool one and that I want them to listen carefully like responsible second graders do". I will act very excited in the story to get the student's extra interested in about what they are about to read. I will start with " This book is called Dad Jackie, and Me. The authors name is Myron Uhlberg and the illustrator is Colin Bootman. It is about the first black man to play baseball in the major leagues. His name was Jackie Robinson. Before Jackie, black players did not play on the most important teams. When Jackie began playing, many people did not like him because they did not want black players to play. The main two characters in this book are a boy and his

father. We never learn the boy's name, but he is the one telling the story. his father is deaf. Like Jackie Robinson, the father has had people make fun of him. Perhaps that is why he likes Jackie Robinson. c) Implementation of the lesson I will read the story, stopping periodically to ask questions and model comprehension strategies. I will read the first page, not displaying the first two-page spread that includes the old couch and the radio, and ask the students: "why doesn't he just watch the game on TV? What do you think it means to "go all the way" in baseball? This will allow the students to make their first connection (TV vs. radio) as well as to define some baseball terminology. "Without television, he had to imagine how the game looked. He had to make pictures in his mind. When I read you a chapter book, like Judy Moody, that's what you had to do too. that's what good readers always try to do. I haven't shown you the pictures on these first two pages on purpose. Close your eyes. I want you to picture what's happening in your mind. There's a little by lying on a wood floor, leaning against a dark brown couch. He is listening to a large radio against the wall. Long ago, radios were very big. Beside him is a glove and baseball, like the ones that I showed you earlier. The boy seems to be staring off into space. Now, do you have the picture in your mind? Time to compare your mental picture with the one in the book. Does anybody have any similarities or differences? I predict some of the students will say "hey! That's exactly what I pictured!" and some will have differences. We will discuss a few. I will turn to the next page and read about how the boy loved baseball but hated the New York Giants because they hated Jackie Robinson. As an easy comprehension question, I will ask the students "Why do you think the Giants hated Jackie Robinson?" Tell your partner. I have already suggested the answer in the introduction of the lesson but will assess whether they can recall the information or not. The next page shows Jackie and his dad in a bedroom holding two tickets that dad had gotten for them. I will ask the students "What problems might dad face in going to a baseball game?" Talk to your partner about it. Because Dad is deaf, many complications could arise, in which hopefully the students will be able to predict some. I will read the next page where the boy mentions tucking his lucky pencil behind his ear. I will allow for the students to make a personal connection here by asking: "Do you think his pencil is really lucky? I can make a connection here. When I was a kid, I had a lucky hair tie. I wore it for every sporting event that I played in and watched. Have you ever had anything that you thought would bring you good luck? I will call on individuals with their hands raised to share their lucky items. The next page the boy exclaims that there is no way dad could meet Jackie because Jackie doesn't know sign language. I will ask the students, Do you think the boy knows sign language? How would that help if they actually did get to meet Jackie Robinson? The next page is the two entering the stadium and the boy says that he clutched his ticket for dear life. Clutched is one of our vocabulary words so I will ask the students "What did the boy mean when he said he clutched his ticket for dear life? Maybe you can make a connection here. Have you ever had anything so special that you help onto it very tightly so you wouldn't lose it? What was it? The students will use prior experiences and knowledge to answer this

The next two page spread is the boy describing inside the stadium. I will ask the class why they think the boy thought the ballfield was so beautiful. Hopefully someone will be able to tell me that it is because this was his first time seeing it! I will read the next two pages and stop at the page with Jackie Robinson on it. Because dad was deaf, he did not know how the word "Jackie" actually sounded and it came out as him yelling "Ah-Ghee". I will ask the students why they think the boy looked down at his feet when people looked at his father. The next page with Jackie at bat, the boy is signing to his dad what is happening and says that his dad "listened". I will stop and say, wait a minute, the boy says "dad listened". But I thought his father is deaf? How could he listen? This last page is halfway through the story. The boy's father yells "Ah-Ghee" again but nobody seemed to notice since Jackie just scored to tie the game. I will ask the students why nobody stared at dad this time? This is where a quick discussion will happen. I will ask the class to help me summarize what we have read so far. After the summary I will say "we have learned two new vocabulary words today". One work from the book is gloomy. What word? Gloomy means dark and sometimes a little scary or sad. If I said it was a gloomy afternoon, that would mean that there were many dark clouds. In the book, the boy writes, "my dad help my hand as we moved with the rest of the crown through the gloomy underbelly of the stadium". Gloomy means dark and sometimes a little sad or scary (to repeat myself a second time). What word again? The students will reply "gloomy". As I talk about the word I will have written it up on the chart paper with the definition " a little sad or scary" next to it. Another word from the book is clutched. What word? [they reply with clutched] When you clutch something, you hold on tight. When the boy is standing in line with his ticket, he says, "I clutched it for dear life". Like when you (point to a student who shared their clutch story prior to this) clutched ____. To clutch something means to hold on tight. What word? [clutched]. As I explain what clutched means, I will write it below gloomy on the chart paper with " to hold on tight" next to it. d) Closure I will tell the students that we will get to finish the story tomorrow! But that now they need to return to their seats. I will say those with green on them can walk back to their seats. Next, students with blonde hair can return to their seats. Next, those students with brown hair can return to their seats. Finally, anyone that's left can return to their desk. Please get out your reading journals and complete the imitate and combine sentences that I have written up here on the chart paper. Remember, what I mean to imitate is to write this sentence in a new way but keep the same meaning. Write "This time, nobody seemed to notice." in a different way but keep the same meaning! When I say to combine "my dad let me hold my ticket. I clutched it for dear life. I mean to put those two sentences together to make one complete sentence that makes sense. Join the two into one sentence. As soon as you are done with those two activities, work on your written response. I want you guys to write a letter to Jackie Robinson. Be as creative as you want! Write a message to him to give him suggestions about what he should do about the mean things some people say to him. Don't forget to write the title at the top! I have modeled what it should look like up here on the chart paper:

March 11, 2013 Dad, Jackie, and Me By: Myron Uhlberg Dear Jackie, I think you should tell the people _____________ when they are mean to you. I think _____________. Write two or three sentences to Jackie about what he should do! This does not require talking so make sure you are doing your own work. I will use the rest of reading time, about 8 minutes, for them to complete these three tasks. If a student doesn't finish they can finish it at any time they have extra throughout the week. If a student finishes early I will instruct them to read their chapter books silently.

e) Clean-up Once reading time is up, students will put their reading journals and books away and will be instructed to turn their attention to Ms. Shuey for further instruction. H. DIFFERENTIATION I have planned to meet the needs of all the students in my classroom. We have three SPED students in our classroom who go to see a reading specialist during this time. They are reading different books and working on different comprehension strategies. No student can finish early in regards to reading the story. Those who are absent will hear a re-cap of the first half on the second day that we read. There will also be a day to reread. The students who get off task will be re-directed by myself and their classmates. There are no ELL students in my class, so this book will be appropriate since all of the students speak English. Students who are struggling with my learning objectives will be given extra attention and guidance. I do not anticipate any problems with the tasks since they have been doing lessons like this all year. Some students may have problems creating sentence in the written response since it is so open-ended. I would provide another sentence frame to help focus their thinking a little bit. If a student finishes early, they may read a book of their choice until reading is over. I do not anticipate more than one or two students to finish the activity, since the read-aloud will take a while. This is just fine. They may finish it at the end of the day when they have a twenty minute time slot for "catch-up" work or enrichment activities. All students will be able to finish the three activities in their journals by the end of the day. I. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT? I am hoping that my directions are clear and easy, avoiding any embarrassing situations and issues. However, I have learned to expect the unexpected. The students may potentially have no interest in the book at all, in which I would ask more questions to allow them to personally connect with the story. As said before, the students love being read aloud to so I do not see this as a huge threat. Students may have trouble focusing for a long period of time, which I hope the frequent questioning, partner talk, and individual connections will help to cure. Students may get off task at their seats while they are writing in their reading journals. I will notice, as I will be walking around, and will approach the student to see what they have done so far. I will encourage them and ask them questions to get their mind back on the task at hand.

Lesson Implementation Reflection

I. How did your actual teaching of the lesson differ from your plans? Describe the changes and explain why you made them. I wrote the vocabulary on the chart paper and just talked about it with them rather than have them write it down. They were already writing a four sentence reading response so I thought that it would be just as beneficial to do the imitate, combine, and vocabulary discussion as a class. I asked the students different ways they thought it would be good to imitate and combine the sentences. I wrote the best example that we decided as a class on the chart paper under the original sentences. During the vocabulary discussion I let a few kids tell me examples of things that are gloomy and things that they had clutched before so that they could make the meanings of the vocabulary words personal. I decided I would ask the kids about Jackie Robinson before the story and they had heard of him before! They told me almost exactly what my introduction said so I reiterated the fact that he was the first black player in the major leagues and didnt have to spend much time on the historical figure himself. Instead of all of the partner side discussions when answering the questions, I had the students answer most of them by raising their hands. They were a little bit on the energetic side the day I taught my lesson so I had to make that adjustment so they wouldnt get side tracked. The two times they talked to the person next to them, they did wonderful. II. Based on the assessment you created, what can you conclude about your impact on student learning? Did they learn? Who learned? What did they learn? What evidence can you offer that your conclusions are valid? I am not quite sure if my assessment allowed me to check all of my objectives for every student. Informally I observed that they knew about Jackie Robinson and that they understood the vocabulary words. With their summaries, I observed that they knew the plot and events that we had read but I could have used a concrete assessment here to see if they individually understood (maybe with a story map or something like that). Their ability to decide as a class what an appropriate imitate and combine sentence were shows some comprehension strategies or that they recognize some comprehension strategies and their validity. The special education kids were not in the classroom during this time so they did not get to hear the story or learn about Jackie Robinson, but the rest of the class was present. In terms of evidence, most of mine is observed and not concrete. The comprehension questions that I asked I believe addressed my objectives very well but did not supply a concrete piece of evidence. The students learned and practiced prediction (especially with the opening page) and were able to tell a summary of events. The events however were not in order by how the story went but were in order by importance to the child describing the event. I only had 12 kids in the classroom so everybody got to talk at some point. When reading their written responses that I collected, most of the students suggested that Jackie should ignore the people that were being mean to them because it wasnt fair and to keep playing baseball. Most of the responses were very similar. Some students added feeling into theirs saying Dont worry Jackie, I still love you! Their responses demonstrated that they knew correct punctuation (capitalize the beginning of each sentence and put a period at the end). They knew how to put voice into their writing (which also makes it more fun to read). They also showed that they could follow a sentence frame and letter-like heading. III. Describe at least one way you could incorporate developmentally appropriate practice in a better or more thorough way if you were to teach this lesson again. Next time, I think I would add a more formal assessment; not a test but something concrete. The students were so upset that we had to stop the story halfway through, so if I had time, I would read the entire story instead of half of it. I also could have included a hand out or worksheet for the special education teacher that works with the three that were not present for the lesson so that they too could have benefited in some way. In order to know about each childs

development and learning, I could have asked my cooperating teacher more questions about each students

learning and experiences prior to giving the lesson. To know what is individually appropriate I should continually observe their play and interaction with the environment and others to cater to each childs interests and abilities. I challenge myself in future lesson plans to give specific feedback, rather than general comments such as good. Giving students feedback that is specific, acknowledges their answer and attempts to draw connections and relevancy.
IV. Based on the assessment data you collected, what would you do/teach next if you were the classroom teacher? To further their study on famous Americans, I would have them participate in a readers theatre about the six they learned about. I have found a readers theatre, six separate short plays, that the kids could read/act out! I think that they would love this. It would reiterate the factual information that they need to know for history, as well as work on their fluency and reading skills. This is a fantastic way that I could incorporate multiple subjects into one lesson. I would cast students in each play, they will get to be in more than one, and they could practice in their small groups during the week and show it to the class by the end of the week. This would be awesome as a social students review but also as a way to have them practice their inflection and voice expression while reading. Maybe to further their letter writing techniques they could write letters to other famous Americans or could move into learning about structuring paragraphs.

V. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about young children as learners? Young children I have found need a lot of encouragement and direction. Just hearing directions one time is not enough for them to understand. Relating the lesson and material to things they are familiar with prompt them to converse among each other and promote dialogue in the classroom. They become excited about the subject matter since they have had prior experiences that are relatable. They also were especially excited because I was excited about the book. I need to take the culture that they live in and the things that they value as kids and incorporate those things into the lessons that I plan for the future. I called on a student to answer one of the comprehension questions because he hadnt had a chance to talk yet. I learned that this may not have been the best way to get him to interact since I put him on the spot. He did not want to answer the question because he probably felt pressured to. I learned that a lot of my students enjoyed telling impromptu stories mid-lesson (about things that they clutched or their lucky item). This is okay, as long as the group does not get off task. I learned that the kids absolutely love being read to. They were attentive the whole entire time and even gasped at some of the pictures. It was fun to read to them and see their reactions! I also learned that young kids have a lot of feelings and felt bad for the little boys dad since he couldnt hear. They were able to relate to the little boy being embarrassed about his dad. VI. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced, about teaching? I learned that teaching is harder than it looks. Getting students to respect you and what you say takes time and experience. It is difficult to keep a students attention, as they have an attention span of about five seconds. Reading with expression really gets the kids interested when reading out loud. Taking your time to read and show the pictures I learned was very important to get the students engaged. It seemed that the kids were really excited about the story because I had made such a big deal about it. I thought they might get tired of answering the questions but they actually enjoyed sharing what they knew. Having the kids do most of the talking I found is actually quite beneficial. It is extremely important to prepare and come prepared for a lesson, since things even seem to go wrong when you have a thorough plan. I could not imagine all of the problems I would run into if I had come unprepared. A long day of teaching is extremely tiring, so a good nights sleep and preparation is vital. Planning lessons take a lot more time than anyone would think, especially using the template provided. Completing them the night before is not going to work.

VII. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about yourself? As a teacher, the students feed off of your energy 100%. If you have high energy about a certain topic, they become more interested in it. If you are grouchy and act like you do not care, they wont either. As a teacher you also need to have patience and be ready to think on your toes when things do not go as planned. I have learned about myself that I need to think of more creative ideas even though that is something that is hard for me. I learned that I have a lot more patience than I thought I had. I learned that the students know a lot more than I think they do. I learned that it is okay for the students to give me multiple answers that are equally as good as the one that I thought of myself. It was really neat to see the different ways to add sentences together and the different examples they gave. This reinforced that multiple perspectives and answers are okay! All in all, I loved doing the lesson with the kids and felt a sense of delight being in front of them!