Mini Lesson

Grade: Kindergarten Mini-Lesson Rationale (Why are you teaching this lesson?): The students that I am focusing on are still struggling with initial sounds, blends, and blending sounds together to make words. I wanted to focus on these aspects to strengthen their skills with creating words through combining sounds. This will essentially help them with their spelling. Objective for this lesson: Students will be able to create words through adding single sounds to –it and –in as well as make words by adding blends to the beginning of words.  Materials & supplies needed: Alphabet letter magnets: b, k, I, n, p, w, t, s, h, m and v and cookie sheet.

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event  • Introduction to the lesson  (What will you say to help children understand the purpose of the lesson?  How will you help them make connections to prior lessons or experiences?  How will you motivate them to become engaged in the lesson?) (_1__ minutes)  Teacher will say: “Ok guys I know that we have been working with sounds and blending sounds to make words all year. Today we’re going to work with the word work letters to make different words when we add sounds to the beginning of –it and –in. So I want you to look at these letters and move different sounds in front of –it and –in and tell me what word you have made. Were going to take turns doing this so pay close attention to what words your friends have made so you can make a different word.” • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson (Include specific details about how you will begin and end activities; what questions you will use; how you will help children understand behavior expectations during the lesson; when/how you will distribute supplies and materials) (_20__ minutes) Begin the activity by sitting the three students in a half circle around the cookie sheet and letters and place the letters on the sheet. Remind the students that they will be taking turns so to allow every person’s brain to do their own work and keep their ideas in their own head so that were not giving our own ideas to each other. First ask the students how to spell it. Allow each student to place an initial sound in front of –it to make different words. Have the students take turns until all of the possible sounds have been used. Ask the students what two letters can be combined that can create a blend that will make a word. Scaffold the students if they are struggling by giving one of the letters from the blends. Once all of the blends have been found repeat the process with –in. • Closing summary for the lesson (How will you bring closure to the lesson and involve children in reflecting on their experiences?  How will you involve them making connections to prior lessons or prepare for future experiences?  What kind of feedback do you want from them at this time?) (_1__ minutes) Discuss with the students the different sounds that each letter makes by holding up the letter and having them make the sounds including the sounds that blends make. Discuss with the students how adding sounds to words makes new words and remind the students that they have been doing this all year long with stretching their words to help them spell. Discuss with the students that this is a good use of both reading and writing words by finding words inside words that they already know and sound out the rest of the word. Ask the students how they would do this with s-it. The students should be able to recognize that they know it and just have to sound out the initial sound /s/. Assessment: (How will you know the students are progressing toward your identified objective?  What will you observe for and/or take notes on to help you plan follow-up instruction?) I will be conducting an ongoing oral assessment throughout the activity. I want to see if my students can identify all of the initial correct sounds, say the word correctly, and see what they struggle the most with. Their struggle will help me identify what I need to focus on in a follow-up lesson as well as see if they are ready for the next step of working with sounds at the end of words. In my mini-lesson, I chose to work with a group that has been labeled as the lowest proficiency level in regards to their reading comprehension. There normally is 4 students in this group, however my boy with cerebral palsy was absent today, so I did not get to work with him. There is one girl in my group, who struggles a lot with sounds in regards to initial, middle, ending and stretching sounds to make words. She has very little self-confidence and often times needs to be told what to do multiple times. She also needs a lot of scaffolding to complete tasks. She does however, generally do well when she is working one on one with someone and has made improvements over the school year. One of the boys I am working with in this lesson has a difficulty in recognizing the letter names. While he does not know the letter names he is able to assign the correct sounds to the letters. He is pulled out twice everyday, once for a group intervention where they work on their reading skills, as well as once one on one with a reading specialist who works with him on his individual needs for reading. He has made a lot of improvements since the year began, but still needs help with blending sounds especially when words contain blends. My other little boy began the year extremely low, with not knowing any sounds that the letters make and could not apply the connection between the sounds he heard to the letters. He has increased greatly in his abilities and is now reading words and knows the assignments of the sounds with the symbols. He is pulled out once a day for the same group intervention that my other boy is pulled out for to work on group reading skills.             I have worked one on one with all three of these students over the year on different aspects of their reading. Every week I do an end of the week assessment with my students where they must read a group of words that is both heart words and amazing words that they learn from the curriculum “Reading Street.” They also are responsible for reading 4 sentences on the assessment. I also have sat with this group of students during their reading groups where they take turns reading a book that is on their level. Both of these experiences on top of the normal time I spend helping the students with their writing has given me a lot of data on these students. I have gotten to know these students really well, and have become familiar with their misconceptions and needs pertaining to reading.             In this mini-lesson I wanted to focus on initial sounds in words to help these students with their reading and writing skills. My MT has been focusing on this with this particular group of students because they often times struggle with initial sounds and blending. I wanted to strengthen their abilities by providing them with two words that they are familiar with –it and –in, and show them how adding initial sounds can change the words into different words. I also wanted to help my students become familiar with adding blends to the initial sounds. I lastly, wanted to strengthen their reading and writing abilities by showing them how when words contain words they know they only have to figure out the initial sounds to figure out how to read or spell it.             This lesson went really well for me. My students were really engaged in the activity and were really thinking and sounding the words out to figure out which sounds made a word and which sounds did not. My students would often times move a letter in front of the word and would sound it out and on their own would say “that’s not a word,” and then look to find another initial sound that did make a word. My students did struggle with blends as I anticipated and needed scaffolding to help them find the different blends. I did this through giving them one letter of the blend and have them find the other letter that would make sense. For example, if the word was spit I would give them p-i-t and ask them what other letter could be added to the beginning that would make a blend to create a word.             I think that if I were to teach this lesson again, I would review with my students first all of the different initial blends that can be added to words, and what sounds they make. I feel that this would have helped my students think on their own a little better to recognize different words that could be created with blends. I also may chose words that could have more blends added to them than what –it and –in had, because there were only a couple of words that could be made.             If I were to make a follow up lesson to this lesson, I would discuss with my students about the blends and initial sounds that we used to create words, and remind them of the words that we formulated from the past activity. I then would focus with them on end sounds that can be added to familiar words to make different words. This would extend their understandings to incorporate what they learned to apply it to a different method.