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SCENARIO ONE: WONDERING ABOUT GOOD INSTRUCTION
IN A SECOND-GRADE CLASSROOM
This lesson started out strong but
quickly deteriorated. First, I loved the ambience in this
classroom. It looked warm and inviting with the lamp and
the book nook. The teacher seemed to have great rapport
with her students. It almost felt like a family the way
they talked to each other. On the surface, any parent
would want their child in this classroom. Students
cheerfully came to the rug, like they were eager to get on
with the business of learning. The teacher didn’t
actively do anything to get her students to care.
However, she must have “set the stage” for this type of
lesson many times in the past—or students wouldn’t have
been so tuned in to the expectations when they arrived at
the rug.
Next, the teacher announced that the
objective was “asking good questions.” That is one of the
metacognitive comprehension strategies, and a legitimate
objective, although I might have chosen something more
specific and measurable (like asking questions about
characters’ thoughts, words, and actions). However, what
happened to prior knowledge and predictions? The teacher
didn’t address these points at all. Also, there was no
discussion of relevant vocabulary words. Actually, there
wasn’t any kind of explanation either beyond simply
stating the objective.
This lesson was taking place in a
second grade. I think the teacher could have explained
many things about asking good questions that would have
made this objective more meaningful to her second
graders. For example, she could have told the class some
words that often begin good questions (Who, what, when,
where, why, how). She could have said that good readers
often ask questions about the characters in a story.
Giving students a couple of hints about how good readers
ask questions as they read would have made the modeling
more productive.
Instead, this teacher just charged
ahead and started to read. She stopped periodically and
shared with the class the questions that were going
through her mind. But she never said how she came
up with her question, or why this was a good
question to ask. What was worse was that when students
tried to talk about the questions in their mind,
the teacher told them not to talk, just to listen to her.
This eliminated bridging and any kind of student practice
of the objective.
As soon as the teacher finished
modeling she broke the students into pairs and had them
apply the objective independently. The lesson does not
say whether the teacher worked with any students at this
time, guiding them through the process. It does not look
like there was any real guided practice! Even worse,
several students (at least) were reading at their
frustration level. Because they could not read the text,
they relied upon pictures to ask their questions, and
their questions were very trivial as a result. (The
scenario doesn’t describe what the teacher was doing at
this time.)
The lesson ended with the teacher
pulling everyone back together to reflect on their
learning. At least I think that was the intent. In
reality, though, what actually occurred was that the
teacher praised all children for the questions they
asked. Instead, she should have found a way to commend
the worthy questions and show students that other
questions may not have done much to enhance their
comprehension. Of course she would have had to find a
nice way of saying this. But in the end it would have
been worth it because now students will think that they
achieved the desired standard—and that is what they will
aim for tomorrow, as well.
This teacher left out many steps in
the gradual release of responsibility. Her lesson was
less explicit than it might have been, and that explains a
lot about why so many students did not succeed.
Developing a coaching plan for this
teacher would be a very good use of the coach’s time not
just because she needs a plan, but also because she seems
to be a very caring teacher and would probably be open to
instructional strategies that would help her students.
While there were many areas of this lesson that could be
improved, I think I would begin with the explanation of
the objective and help her tie her modeling to the
explanation. This would form a firm foundation for
building students’ knowledge.
***
SCENARIO TWO: A MORNING IN MS. C.’S FOURTH GRADE
I think Ms. Corbin presented an
exemplary reading lesson. To begin, the classroom
environment seemed positive and management was not an
issue as evidenced by the way students came to the rug and
settled down right away. She “Set the Stage for Literacy
Instruction” first by getting students to care. In order
to heighten their curiosity, she used a “Treasure Bag.”
Once revealed, the stuffed spider became a useful visual
to keep the lesson’s momentum going.
Ms. Corbin activated prior knowledge
with a “Know—Want to Know—and Learned” chart. This gave
her an idea of what students really did know about
arachnids. She recorded what they said, which was smart,
because then she could refer to it later to clear up
misconceptions. Furthermore, Ms. C. activated prior
knowledge about the genre by asking students what they
knew about nonfiction. She attempted to activate prior
knowledge about the author too, although this was not an
author that students were familiar with. I really liked
the way this teacher introduced vocabulary. She chose
just a couple of words and it was like she was having a
little conversation about them. She didn’t make this
vocabulary work seem like a “lesson.”
Ms. Corbin finished “Setting the
Stage” by identifying the purpose of the reading: to
notice things that students considered important. Then
she explained how to meet this objective. This was one of
my favorite parts of this lesson. I love how Ms. C.
explained how to decide if something was important. She
made a list of things that could be important about an
animal, and wrote the list on a chart that children could
see. Then she wrote the objective itself next to the
picture of the target. This was perfect for the visual
learners in the class.
The final thing Ms. Corbin explained
before beginning the reading was how the lesson would
proceed. She explained how she would model and what she
expected students to do based on this modeling. Now the
expectations were clear for everyone.
Ms. C. moved on to “Building
Knowledge.” When she modeled she also explained why
she was stopping in particular places and why
certain pieces of information might be important. After a
while, she told students that she expected them to
notice facts that they thought might be important.
This was the way she “bridged” to greater student
independence. To check their understanding, Ms. C. asked
students at the end of the session to describe how they
had gone about noticing important information about
arachnids. A final significant point about the whole
class lesson was that it was only 20 minutes long; Ms. C.
realized she needed to move on to other activities in her
literacy block and couldn’t spend the whole time on shared
reading.
Good classroom management was evident
again in the smooth way Ms. C. transitioned to small group
instruction and independent reading. You could tell she
had spent time planning what students would do next, and
that in this room, students read independently every day.
I liked how she incorporated fluency as one of the
follow-up activities and that there were criteria
available to students for fluent reading. In this
literacy block, there was also time for writing with
students working today on revision. This makes me think
that there is an emphasis here on the writing process.
An hour was devoted to this next
portion of the literacy block, a good length of time. In
addition to their independent reading and follow-up
activities, Ms. C. also worked with small groups.
Different groups were working on different things
according to their needs. This was good, but I thought
Ms. C. should have tried to work with one more group. If
Ms. C. only works with two groups per day, each group
might get to work with their teacher only two or three
times per week.
Ms. C. concluded her morning with
time for students to reflect on what they had learned.
She used this as an opportunity to link what students had
accomplished today to help her plan for tomorrow. She
also made sure her students knew that they would
eventually need to produce a written response to a
question that measured the learning objective. While this
provided accountability, it did not over-burden students
with a list of questions to which they would need to
provide written answers.
All in all, I think this was an
excellent lesson and showed how multiple aspects of
explicit literacy instruction could be orchestrated. I do
not think Ms. C. needs a “coaching plan of action.”
However, if I was the coach in her building, I would help
her organize her literacy block to accommodate three
groups per day rather than two. I would also like to
bring other teachers to her classroom to watch her set the
stage for learning and build knowledge. I would
especially want teachers to see how she had a single,
clear objective, and how she explained the objective
before modeling it.
***
SCENARIO THREE: SMALL-GROUP INSTRUCTION IN THE FIFTH
GRADE
Although this scenario doesn’t
describe the whole class lesson that preceded the small
group instruction, I liked that Mr. Sayre used a picture
book with his fifth graders. The Rough-Face Girl
is a good book to use with older students, and it
coordinated well with the text (another multicultural
fairytale) that he used for guided reading.
Before getting to that lesson,
though, Mr. Sayre assigned work to the rest of his class.
The Venn diagram seemed to have merit. Comparing and
contrasting story elements is an activity that helps
students think analytically. But answering ten
questions? That’s not such a great idea. How many of
those questions asked for a literal level response? I
think it would have been better to ask most of those
questions in a discussion, and give children just a couple
of them to respond to in writing (preferably higher level
thinking questions). That way, they would have cared more
about the quality of the answer they provided for each of
the questions.
As for the essay, it sounds like this
was mostly “test prep.” I know that some test prep is
appropriate, but if students just churn out essay after
essay in response to various prompts, they will quickly
learn to despise writing, and may not even put forth the
needed effort for the test, itself. I hope Mr. Sayre
gives his students the opportunity to do other kind of
writing, too—even something like poetry or descriptive
writing that is not specifically assessed on the state
test.
A final point that bothered me about
this teacher’s independent activities was the message he
sent to his students about independent reading. He said,
“When your other work is done, you may continue reading
your independent book.” Should students conclude from
this that reading was something to do when they ran out of
“the important stuff?” He made reading sound like an
unnecessary “extra.”
Then came the small group lesson. A
problem I noted with this right away was that Mr. Sayre
admitted to meeting with each group only three times per
week—even his lowest group. Struggling readers should
meet with their teacher (not a paraprofessional) every
day!
The lesson started out well enough,
with Mr. S asking students to make some predictions about
the story. I think he could have eliminated the picture
walk, however. That is too primary for fifth graders, and
it is not necessarily a good idea to encourage students to
construct the whole story before reading it, solely
from the illustrations. Furthermore, this teacher didn’t
build on students’ predictions in any way. He could have
used their predictions and prior knowledge as a way of
moving toward the lesson objective.
Unfortunately there did not seem to
be a lesson objective! Mr. Sayre never mentioned any
strategy or skill he wanted students to learn as a result
of reading this text. I believe this was the biggest
problem with this lesson; it would be the first thing I
would address as a coach!
Although there wasn’t an objective,
there were plenty of vocabulary words—too many, in fact.
Some of these words were too technical to be useful in
students’ everyday oral and written language (words like
gingko and hemp). It did not sound like Mr.
S gave students much opportunity to try to use the words
themselves; he did most of the talking.
Meanwhile, there also appeared to be
some management issues. There were many interruptions
with Mr. S needing to reprimand children for behavior
standards that probably should have been in place by now.
Mr. Sayre did not really guide the
reading at all. He simply sent students back to their
seats with the direction to read the story so they could
discuss it next time they met. But beyond just
understanding the basic plot, what was their purpose?
What kind of evidence did he want them to look for?
Again, the lack of objective shortchanged students.
Mr. Sayre did not model. He did not
gradually release responsibility to students. He did not
let students practice or ask them to reflect. When the
students in that group returned to their seats, he would
have had no idea who had improved as a reader that day. I
think this is a perfect example of a teacher who is “going
through the motions” of small group instruction without
actually teaching anything. This type of
“instruction” may satisfy an administrator who does not
know a lot about what should occur during small group
sessions because the teacher is physically working with a
group at a little table, and a certain amount of planning
did take place. But it should send up many red
flags to coaches who understand explicit teaching and what
should be present in a high quality lesson.
I think Mr. Sayre needs a coaching
plan. The first step would be to help him choose a
worthwhile objective and to plan his lesson based on that
objective. I would also help him use his time more
productively during his small group sessions in order to
build in more minutes for students to practice using the
skill or strategy with his guidance. |
