Literacy Lesson Observation

Literacy Lesson Observation, Reflection, & Recommendations

Location: Prince Edward County Middle School Date: 4/2/15

Grade Level: 6

Topic or Focus of Lesson:

Objectives: What objectives were apparent in the lesson? If there was a lesson plan available, did the objectives in the plan match the ones you observed being taught?

6.4 The student will read and learn the meanings of unfamiliar words and phrases within authentic texts.

b. Use roots, cognates, affixes, synonyms, and antonyms to expand vocabulary.

Teaching What did you see the teacher do? What teaching techniques were used? Pay attention to materials, grouping options, instructional strategies, pacing…

The teacher presented a power point to students to discuss prefixes and suffixes. The students were given materials: paper plate, word list, scissors. They were instructed to cut the words into morphological chunks and categorize them in the plate by prefix, suffix, and root.

Students What were the students doing? How were they engaged in the learning? Were they engaged in the learning? Any off-task behaviors?

The students were engaged in discussion during power point. They were focused on separating the affixes and roots. They made comments on how many prefixes there were compared to how many suffixes there were.

Interesting observations: What did you see that was interesting, unusual, surprising…?

It was interesting to see the students thinking through deconstructing the words. They were making generalizations regarding the frequency of prefixes compared to the frequency of suffixes. After the words were deconstructed, the students created words of their own.

Questions you have after the lesson about the teacher, teaching techniques, students, content of the lesson, literacy learning, literacy instruction, etc. What did you leave the lesson reflecting on, wondering about, etc.?

I left the lesson evaluating how to implement the lesson into my yearly curriculum. The students were working in groups, on-task, and making generalizations. The lesson help the students to visually see the deconstruction and then construction of words.

Positives: List two positive things (related to literacy learning) you observed from each:

Support: List two areas in which you could assist or support the teacher with this lesson or topic. Include the specific standard # you would be assisting the teacher with (see list below), a description of your suggestion, and cite a resource the teacher could use (this could be a textbook, article, website, video, book or any other resource that could enhance or extend their lesson). Even if the lesson is absolutely wonderful, consider what adaptations for individual literacy needs (both high and low) might be made, what extensions could follow, etc.

Support:

Idea 1: IRA standard #.

Description of idea.

Resource the teacher can use to support this idea

I would enrich the lesson by adding a student created dictionary. The students can added newly created words with student generated definitions. I would encourage the creation of made-up words with definitions.

Idea 2: IRA standard #.

Description of idea.

Resource the teacher can use to support this idea

Another extension would be to reread a story recently used to practice skills. But on this close analysis, reread to hunt for words that have prefixes/suffixes added to roots. Then have the students create a list of all the words their group can find. They then follow the same procedure of deconstructing the words.