Reading

2
Veronica Conway
Mrs. Denise Serico
Easthampton Community School

Dr. Germinario
Nov. 20, 2014

Ms. Conway began the reading lesson by asking students to turn and talk about how their families work together. She then called
on a few students to share. The teacher introduced the key vocabulary that students would encounter in the story through slides
and active engagement. Ms. Conway told students that they would be listening to a story and she gave them purposes for listening
to each segment of the story. Teacher showed students a hand with the 5 Ws, expecting them to use the question words to retell
the story. She gave the students the opportunity to turn and talk to retell the story to a partner. While students were retelling, the
teacher reminded them to use the pictures on the smart board and the question words to help them retell. She handed out flip
books and had students write each of the 5Ws on a tab. She then discussed each of the 5Ws and recorded on the board the
answers to each question word. Students copied the answers onto their flip books. She closed the lesson by telling students that
they learned tools to retell a story.

S - Holding students accountable to listening to each other. Varied the active engagement strategies used (turn and talk, luck of the
draw, role play, non-verbal responses) and transitions (clapping, hand raised, eyes on me). Excellent use of graphics on Smart
board to promote understanding of vocabulary. Waited for students attention before proceeding with directions. Used praise.
W - Pacing (too much time spent on introduction and vocabulary) She expected students to retell the story based on the pictures
and questions words, but did not model this for them. The task became a copying activity rather than a task where students
demonstrated their ability to retell the story.
Minimize the amount of time having students share after a turn and talk. You could paraphrase some of the statements you
overheard and move on to the next part of the lesson. When teaching a lesson focused on developing understanding of vocabulary,
consider having students use whiteboards to define the words. (This forces all to think about the vocabulary.) If you want students
to retell the story, you need to model and have them practice by retelling each section immediately after listening to it. You could
also have them write the retelling of each section as they listen. To differentiate, Mrs. Glenn could pull the students who struggle
with retelling and she could record. Before presenting the story, tell students that they will be required to retell the story (state the
objective), so they pay close attention to story and not just the questions you asked. Consider having students do something
physical between different segments of a lengthy lesson (1.25 hours).
Ms. Conway is commended for the amount of wait time and use of various transition strategies to insure that students are listening to
directions and instruction. She is also commended for implementing suggestions made by her supervisor (e.g., using praise and
including segments of time in lesson plan). It is recommended that Ms. Conway continue to work to plan lessons in which students
are held accountable for demonstrating their understanding and their ability to apply a skill. In order to get the students to do more
of the thinking and work, it is essential that Ms. Conway model the thinking process and the task, and then assign the completion of
the task so that you can assess how well each students can achieve the objective, in this case, retell the story. Ms. Conway has the
potential to be a highly effective teacher. It is my hope that the lesson for the final observation will include a clearly defined
objective, solid modeling of expectations and skills, opportunity for students to practice with teacher guidance, an assessment that
can be used to inform future instruction, and a strong closure to solidify the learning that occurs.

11/22/14