Breakthrough: Week 10 in the Learning Academy

This week I taught a whole group lesson to my class at the Learning Academy. I was extremely nervous about it, but it turned out to go a lot more smoothly than I had anticipated. Check below to see what I did! (Johnny was absent from class today, so I was unable to work with him one-on-one.)

Topic of Lesson: Inference

Length of Lesson: 40 minutes

Materials: lesson plan, three sheets of "Inference Organizer," one copy of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and the PDF version, SMART Board, sticky notes, a dry erase board with markers and eraser, and dry erase boards with markers and erasers for all students

Whole Group Lesson: I began the lesson with a discussion about inference and how it worked. I explained to the students that inference is taking what we know in our own minds, what the text tells us, and making a theory about what the author is trying to tell us. After this discussion, I began the read aloud of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I selected this text because it is engaging for students of all ages and provided good places to chunk the text since all of these students have some form of learning disability or processing disorder (except for Johnny). During the story, I had the students both use inference and prediction to answer some questions I had. I would ask them, "What do you think will happen next?" and "Why do you think this little pig is angry?" The last question is when the Third Little Pig is talking to Al (the wolf) very rudely. We can only see the Pig's eyes and eyebrows in this illustration, and that's what I wanted the students to pick up on. I prompted them to dig deeper into the image and find out why they believed the Third Little Pig is angry besides the text saying so. After several minutes of discussion, they were able to figure out the clue I was trying to give them and direct them towards. I finished the story and then moved into the small group activity.

Small Group Lesson: I originally was going to divide the class of nine into three groups of three, but Johnny wasn't there, so I had to improvise. I divided the class in half down the middle for two groups of four. I explained to them I was going to write four questions down on the board and I wanted them to each answer them individually, but discuss it as a group as well to get the answers. The questions looked for answers that were not in the text directly and would have to be inferred. I had to repeat the directions once more and clarify some misconceptions before they were allowed to begin. They discussed with their group for around 10 minutes about the questions at hand. I alternated between the two groups to watch their conversation and guide their thinking if they got off track. Once they began wrapping up their discussions and answering the questions, I had the students put their sticky notes on the board to compare their answers.

Wrap-Up: To end the lesson, I went over all the responses with the students. Only the first question had a definitive answer, but the other questions ranged in their responses. I called on a few students to expand upon their answers and explain why they picked them. Finally, I had the students give themselves "a round of applause" (clap in a circle) for their hard work.

Reflection/Interpretation

The students responded amazingly to this lesson! My classroom teacher commented that they had wonderful discussion and really got into it. They were less engaged during the read aloud because they were sitting in their seats with only a few students answering my questions. If I was to do this with another class or with this class again, I would definitely pull the students to the carpet for a more communal setting. Otherwise, the students thought through the questions well and gave very good answers. For the fourth question, I had a few students explain their reasoning and I got some intriguing responses. One student commented that the wolf's story wasn't matching up; the wolf wasn't making sense as he went through the story. Another student believed the wolf was telling the truth because the text said so. They wrote in full sentences for their sticky notes (except for the first question) and I really liked this activity. It got the students thinking like "detectives" so they could really dig into the text without feeling overwhelmed. The text was at a good level for the students (since the average reading level is about third grade. I could definitely adapt this lesson to many other books and to a larger classroom! I know I most certainly want to as well.

#week10 #DRI #LA2