Andrea Nelson

CT 4133
Reading Mini lesson

Context:
Reading Workshop 1st Grade

During a read aloud of Iris and Walter True Friends, I reinforced the importance of
understanding character feelings for story comprehension.

Teaching Point: Readers use clues from the book learn about character feelings, which
helps them learn more about the story.

(Times are Teacher does

projected
times, not
actual)
Connection Readers, before we start our reading lesson, I have a question for you. At the end of the
(3 min) day, how many of you have someone ask you how was your day at school?. Hm, most
of you. Thats what I figured. And how many of you usually say good or maybe some
days, bad? Sometimes?

So readers, Ill bet that when you just say good that person has a lot more questions to
ask you! What was good? What did you do? What did you learn? How did you feel?
Good doesnt really help us learn how you felt about the day.
Teach (6 So readers. Today, I want us to practice identifying how our characters are feeling and
min) use this to understand more about our story. Just like when you get asked how you feel,
it is important to be specific and support it with clues from the story.

Today we are going to return to our old friends, Iris and Walter in Iris and Walter: True
Friends.

Teacher begins reading chapter

Im noticing that Iris seems to really want to ride Rain but doesnt know how to start. As
a good reader, Im using clues to help me figure out how she might feel. I can use
pictures and the words to help me figure out what my characters are feeling

I notice in the picture that her hands are up in the air, she looks like she might feel
excited! We can look at the text to see how that matches what we just read. Now that I
know how she feels, I understand that she doesnt just want to ride Rain a little bit, she
feels REALLY excited to learn how to ride rain. Lets keep reading and you all can
practice.
 Active Teacher continues reading
Engagemen Ok, readers so now that we have read more I want you to help me (Story context: Iris
t (7 min) tries different ways to tame Rain with little success. Walter is advising Iris on how to
tame rain).

How do you think Iris is feeling now? Remember to use all of our clues and be specific.
Sad. So perhaps she feels sad, can you give me some clues of why you think that?
(Student highlights the picture of Iris walking with her head down and clues in the text).
Great job using the different clues, sad is one way she might feel, readers can we be more
specific? (Students suggest disappointed). Disappointed, what clues are you using to
learn that? (Student points to same picture as previous student did and notes the tone of
voice with which I read a page).

Continue reading
Readers, what about Walter? How is he feeling? What clues in the book could we use to
figure out how Walter is feeling? Helpful. Interesting, Walter is feeling helpfulhow
do you know? (Student pointed out that for multiple scenes Walter was trying to teach
Iris about what horses like).
Continue reading
Readers, what do you think the lesson of this chapter is? Friends should help each
other. Why do you think this is the lesson, what evidence do you have? (student pointed
to Walter being helpful when Iris was feeling sad).

Link (1 Wow readers! You used character feelings to learn so much more about our familiar
minute) friends Iris and Walter. You even used character feelings to help learn the lesson from the
story. Today while you read, I want you to do the same thing with your own books. As
you read and meet new characters or are reintroduced to old friends, think about how the
character is feeling. Use all of your different clues pictures, what the story says, what
you know about your character, to be specific. You can mark spaces with a sticky with a
face or word to remind you of the feeling you thought the character was having.
Reflection:

The purpose of this lesson was to build upon the work students have already been
doing examining and getting to know characters. Prior to joining the class, my CT told
me that the students had been struggling to distinguish between how a character was
feeling and what a character was doing. As such, in my reading workshop lesson and in
my daily read alouds, I have been trying to incorporate teaching points and lines of
questioning that lead students to develop understandings of character feelings and
emotions. In this lesson, it was my hope to connect this identification and inference work
to larger narrative comprehension work. This lesson focused on a brief chapter of Iris
and Walter to do this work.
When I timed this lesson, I think it was a little longer than the mini lesson
structure asks of. My lesson was about 15 minutes. I intentionally spent more time on the
active engagement and asked a number of questions. I knew my students had a
foundational grasp on this concept and would be capable of steering much of the
conversation. I believe I succeeded in keeping my teach point brief in order to allow for
more active engagement. In general, I think my active engagement mirrored the tools I
used to model during my teach section- be specific and use clues from the story.
However, in terms of time management, I noticed both during my link and my
active engagement, it felt as though I perhaps allowed my student questioning to take up
a bit too much time. In reflecting upon this, I wonder how my specific line of questioning
may have played a role in this- could I have been more succinct in asking questions to
students? I tend to feel (even though it is uncomfortable for me as a teacher!) that
allowing this time for student talk is useful for comprehension. However, I want to be
conscious of the value of keeping a mini lesson mini and then using conferencing or
small group work to engage in further conversation and teach time.
I wonder if I could have shortened this mini lesson is by relying more heavily on
conferencing to bear the brunt of the active engagement. As Taberski (2000) notes,
conferencing can truly be where the core work gets done by students. In this one-on-one
or small group time, I could work with students to tackle individual struggles and teach
into their specific strength or misunderstanding. I could have used this conference time to
help some students focus on being more specific while helping other students continue to
focus on making connections to evidence in the text.
I believe my teaching point was clear and to the point especially because it built
upon work they were accustomed to doing during reading and reading workshop. One
area I might change in doing this lesson again would be to change the link. While I think
that students connected to the link, I am not sure it was clear that just saying good was
not sufficiently descriptive as a feeling nor that the follow up questions were about
supporting the feeling with detail. I am thinking about Caukins (2001) and the concept of
the power of storytelling. I think I could have built out the connection in a way that was a
stronger story as opposed to merely trying to fabricate a similar situation. While I think
most students understood the link, I think that a link or hook that helped to provide a
compelling narrative might have allowed for a strong entry point to my teaching point
and give the double impact of having students practice being storytellers.