Clements Reading Lesson Reflection #1

In the words of Forest Gump, Veronica can often be like a box of chocolates… you never quite know what you are going to get.  She has the potential to be a stand out student for being creative, kind, smart, funny but can also be a stand out student for being mean, uncooperative, rude.  And during this mini lesson, I saw Veronica shine! 

As we were walking down to the reading resource room she seemed a bit nervous.  She said something and I thought I heard her say “I don’t want to go with you.” After repeating the question back to her she repeated herself and said that she said “What are we going to do?”  Once we got to the room I chatted with her a bit and she seemed to be in a good mood.  We moved into explaining what we would be doing and then reading the first chapter of “Charlotte’s Web.”  I was really impressed with her fluency and growth in reading since the beginning of the year.  She stumbled over a few words and tried to just read through them or skip them without sounding them out or understanding the meaning.  I had her go back and look at the word and she eventually was able to figure them out. 

I think I was most surprised by what happened next.  After the video started to play, she narrated and explained what she was looking at very well.  At a few points she stopped because the movie was moving through events faster than they did in the book and she was remembering and trying to retell more of the story from the book.  It was really great to see how well she latched on to the activity.  She did use a lot of direct quotes from the readings that she remembers, but I also saw that with the video she was able to retell the main events of the story.  The video helped her focus more on the main points versus just stating back lines she remembered from the reading.  By using the video, she included many of the main events of the story, and was able to notice a lot of the differences between the book and the movie. 

When we discussed her strategies for comprehension as she read, she said that she was able to see a movie in her head, but sometimes it got fuzzy.  We discussed ways she could make a stronger picture in her head and she came up with drawing pictures of each character as she read about them.  Veronica thought creatively and independently to problem solve and think of ways to make her own learning better. 

This activity was very successful for Veronica, and I think paring the reading with a video is a great way to continue to help Veronica develop those important comprehension skills.