My Lessons

Lessons One & Two: Text-to-Self Connections

The first two lessons in my unit were on text-to-self connections. I ended up changing my lesson organizers after going to a professional development session and seeing a "flip chart" organizer. I had originally planned on having the students complete a t-chart to organize their thoughts on the connections they could make between the text and an event in their lives. However, after talking with my mentor, we decided to make the tasks given to the students easier. After seeing the flip chart organizer at the PD session, I decided that this type of organizer would be best for simplifying the lesson. Instead of telling the students what a text-to-self connection was and then practically forcing them to make a connection inside of an organizer, I had the students complete the first "flip" of the flip chart with information about text-to-self connections (what they are and how you would voice the connection). Other than simplifying the lesson, I also did this because I realized that not every student will be able to connect to every text. Instead of having the students fill out an organizer with connections that they may or may not actually have, I had the students make the flip chart as a reference for their reader's workshop time. If the student could make a text-to-self connection, he or she would get a sticky note and write "TS" on it with a few notes about how they could connect to the text. I followed this same routine with text-to-text and text-to-world connections. Now that the students have these flip charts (made out of card stock), they will keep them as a reference in their reader's workshop book boxes for the year. The students know that they make connections in order to understand the text better and know that they always have their flip chart to use if they need a refresher.

I think the lessons went really well. For the most part, the students were able to understand the concept of making connections to text in order to understand the text better. The students tended to make text-to-self connections (they were given a choice during share time to make a text-to-self/text/world connection to any of the books in their leveled book boxes). However, there were a select few students who made deeper connections, i.e. text-to-text connections. I was very pleased with one student in particular with the text-to-text connection that she made. Most of her peers were making text-to-text connections between books by the same author--I thought it was great that the students were making these connections but that is a very surface connection (i.e. Black Lagoon books). This particular student, however, made a connection between Green Eggs and Ham and a guided reading book because both of the main characters assumed they didn't like something, but once they tried it, they realized they did. I was very pleased with this connection because it showed me that this student really was doing some deeper level thinking.

I began covering questioning on Friday and I will finish that this week. I will also introduce character traits this week. Thus far, the students have been very accepting of these new ideas and seem to understand what they are all about. I think that the adjustments I made were for the best, given the group of students that I have. The only downfall that I see is that there really is no formal assessing going on. This is parallel, however, with the reading program of my mentor teacher. Formal assessing goes on with DRA testing rather than on a weekly/monthly basis. Most of the assessing is done through visual observation and listening to the responses of the students. Through casual conferences with the students individually, I have been able to collect some information about their understanding, but there is nothing written to assess.