Reading Lesson Reflection 2 (Fluency)

• What did you notice about your students' participation and learning in relation to your objectives?
• I believe that the students did an excellent job participating today. Telling them that they were going to be assessing themselves on the amount of expression that they used was a very effective way of keeping them on task and motivated throughout the lesson. They were very excited to continue working on the script, and were also glad to have the different parts assigned so that they could focus on only one set of lines. I timed how long it took them to complete each reading, and their times continued to drop from the last time that I worked with them. Last time, their first reading took 6 minutes and 16 seconds and they were able to get their time down to only 5 minutes and 20 seconds. Today, their first reading took 4 minutes and 45 seconds and the second time through they finished in 4 minutes and 29 seconds. The continually dropping times means that they are becoming more comfortable with the words on the page and also developing their fluency as readers.
• All three students gave themselves a two when I asked them to rate their own expression at the end of the lesson. An example of a completed rating is given below: 

• This indicates that they all believe that they are making progress with respect to their fluency and expression, but they still think that they can work at it more. I think that this is a very promising place to be with these students. It indicates that they still believe that they can get better at reading with expression and are willing to keep trying to improve
• What were the strengths and limitations of your lesson for supporting your students' learning?
• I think one of the major strengths of this lesson was encouraging the students to relate the emotions that the characters in the story were feeling to emotions that they had experienced before in their lives. This allowed them to have a deeper connection to the characters in the story while also making it easier for them to use expression because they were making their reading more authentic. Also, mentioning that they could write on their scripts but not forcing them to do so allowed them the opportunity to give themselves any extra support that they thought they needed without making this fact obvious to the others in the group.
• One of the limitations of this lesson was the fact that there were not many varied emotions that the characters in the story express. Brer Rabbit was either happy or sad, and Brer Bear was either greedy or angry. The students were not able to move past these emotions to expand their ability to read with expression. Similar to this, one of the three parts in the script is the narrator. It was difficult for the group to imagine what kinds of emotions the narrator would use for his lines. In the end, I was able to have the students connect what the narrator was saying to the different things that were happening during the story. This seemed to solve the problem that the narrator was facing, but I still believe that there was more potential for the student who was reading the narrator lines to read with more expression.
• What did you notice about yourself as a teacher? What questions do you have?
• Although I am glad that I wrote a lesson plan, I wish that I did not have to depend on in so much while I was actually leading the lesson. I found myself looking away from the students in my group and at my paper more often than I wished. This almost gave me a disconnect from my students. I felt like I was hiding behind the words that I had previously written instead of allowing the lesson to flow in a more natural fashion.
• I thought that I did a better job today of allowing the students to speak more often throughout the lesson. Instead of answering my own questions or questions that students posed, I was able to let them think through the questions and come to conclusions by themselves. I know that I still have a long way to go, but I am glad that I am aware of the length of some of the statements that I make during the lessons that I teach.
• I am very thankful for the opportunity to work with the same group of students on the same script, but still have questions about how to get them to relate the things that they are reading now to the content that they will be reading the future. How do we, as teachers, make sure that students apply the things that they learn in school to other areas of their life?