Teaching reading in the IP

The teacher whose lesson we used as a jump-start went ahead and taught her 4 half hour sessions over 4 days.

It was exciting to actually teach reading and feel that the children are learning at different levels. What will I change next time? 1. Be VERY organised - right down to how many books are required per group and which group will be working in exercise books. 2. I must have task cards; explaining and writing on the board was fine for stronger children on day one when I had the weaker children, but took too long when weaker children had to work on their own on days 2-4. 3.Activities must be varied; children became restless once they had the same book twice. 4. The creative writing was not very creative. That group should do something that had been planned/prepared/discussed as a whole class before this lesson. 5. I found myself becoming bored by day 4. Will try 2 double sessions over 2 days.

The next lesson that was viewed was planned by a grade 5 teacher who used the first planning session as a guide. She was very positive about having a good chunk of contact time with a small group. All groups were engaged but the one group did not follow their instructions sequentially and missed the point of the study. The teacher concluded the lesson by reflecting on the process to improve the session on day 2. Both teachers planned an assessment sheet which clarified the purpose of the lesson. The second grade 6 teacher started his series of lessons where all students were actively engaged in groups. The one group did not fully understand their instructions and wasted much of their time rather than deciding on a course of action. This was a good point of discussion as it became clear that the most successful parts of these lessons have been grounded by the clarity of instructions. Teachers who continue to teach these lessons this week all plan to review both their verbal and written instructions. It was also decided that students who do not complete the work in class will not have to do it for homework so that they begin to practice the strategy “every minute counts”. Teachers will continue to get better at setting tasks which suit the levels of the groups to avoid student frustration. Next week we plan to discuss the clips that have been recorded in preparation for the inquiry lesson planning using this model.