Haley Clayton GSL 546 September 25, 2013 Interactive Read Aloud Lesson/Presentation Book Choice: The book

k I have chosen to present in this Interactive Read Aloud Lesson is Tyler Makes Pancakes! written by Tyler Florence and illustrated by Craig Frazier. The Fountas & Pinnell reading level is an I and it would be appropriate as a read aloud for preschool thru grade two. It tells the story of the adventure a six year old boy named Tyler and his dog Tofu have when they decided to make pancakes for Tylers parents. Tyler takes the reader through all the steps of preparing pancakes from acquiring the ingredients from his local grocery store all the way up to the final product. As Tyler shops for ingredients, he learns exactly where all the ingredients he needs come from and the journey they take to get from the farm to the store to pancakes. Tyler Makes Pancakes! has many clear illustrations that heavily support the text which would make it extremely useful when teaching an ESL student population. It also demonstrates the fairly western practice of acquiring food at a supermarket and not directly from the source which may be unfamiliar to ESL students. The books focus on cooking is an experience many students have seen or even helped with. In addition, Tyler learns all about how maple syrup which is an important part of Vermont culture that few ESL students have ever experienced before. Background on Students: The group of ESL students I would teach this lesson to are based of a group I have worked with at the school where I am completing my practicum hours. They are a group of four students of which two speak Vietnamese as their first language and two speak Somali as their first language. Based off their WIDA ACCESS scores, they have been grouped together based on their knowledge of the English language. All four students are in first grade, range in age from 6 to 7 years old, have been in the United States between one and two years, and according to their ESL teacher are at an

intermediate level of English acquisition for their age. As I have only worked with this group of students once I do not know their reading levels or individual WIDA ACCESS scores. They are a particularly high energy group and respond best when they are able to interact with the lesson and not just being spoken to. Standards Addressed (PreK-4): Literacy VT GLE 1.3c Students read for meaning, demonstrating both initial understanding and personal response to what is read. This is evident when students make connections among various parts of a text, among several texts, and between texts and other experiences in and out of school. Social Studies VT GLE 6.15.c. Students identify situations where they were consumers and other situations where they were producers or sellers Literacy VT GLE 1.1.g. Students use prior knowledge of the topic and sense of story.

The Learning Plan: Materials: Book, vocabulary visuals, plain pieces of paper, markers/crayons Vocabulary Words: pancakes: a thin, flat round cake that people sometimes eat for breakfast maple tree: a tree that grows where we live that can be used for wood or maple syrup sap: a watery juice inside a plant maple syrup: a sweet, thick liquid made from boiling sap from maple trees Introduction of Story and Vocabulary Words: In this hypothetical scenario, these ESL students would have been learning about kitchen related vocabulary in a prior unit and recently shifted their focus to a larger unit on farms. The past few lessons would have been about farms, the animals that live

there, and the things farms make such as plants and products such as cheese. Specifically, the focus of the unit is the journey from farm to table. Prior to this lesson students will understand the concepts of grocery stores, farms, farm animals, and the role of farmers. This lesson is helping to culminate the important role farmers and animals play in helping us get the food we need to eat but this is the first day of reading aloud this specific book. Prior to performing the read aloud, I will activate students prior knowledge by reading the title Tyler Makes Pancakes! and asking them if they have ever eaten pancakes before and if not what they like to eat in the morning. Then I will ask them to think about how their favorite morning food is made. I will ask them to put their finger on their nose if they know how the steps to making their favorite morning food. I will then call on a student to share some of the steps of making their favorite morning food. I will introduce the vocabulary words with the students and give them each visuals for the vocabulary words. They will hold up the appropriate visual when they hear the new vocabulary words used during the reading. Next, Ill tell them how Tyler is going to go through all the steps of making his favorite breakfast food in this book and we are going to see how farmers and farms, something we have been spending a lot of time on, will be important in helping make what he really wants to eat for breakfast. Read Aloud for Comprehension: In the beginning of the story, Tyler has a dream that he is the captain of a pancake spaceship and wakes up ready to eat breakfast but there is only one thing he wants to eat! Pancakes! Tyler and his dog Tofu head to the store with a list and pancakes as their goal. Tyler finds Mr. Jones as the store and Mr. Jones helps Tyler to find everything he needs and even helps Tyler understand what some of the ingredients are and where they come from. Tyler is very excited about pancakes in this book and conveying this enthusiasm to the students will help them be engaged in the story and motivate them to want to understand the story. The majority of this book is dialogue and using different voices,

intonation, and expression will bring the story alive. To make the text more accessible to ELLs, I will have them hold up the visuals when they hear the new vocabulary words and I will point to the images that accompany the text as I read to help further their understanding. At the end of the book I will ask some questions such as: What did Tyler dream of making? Can someone tell me what pancakes are? What are some of the things Tyler had to buy at the store to make pancakes? Flip back to a page where one of the ingredients gets made. Take some private thinking time, raise your hand, and tell how this ingredient got to Mr. Jones grocery store. Repeat this. I will differentiate my needs based on where I know students are at in terms of their listening abilities in English and how strong their comprehension skills are. The students I am teaching have been homogeneously grouped based of their English acquisition level so differentiation will not play as large a roll but I will utilize it when necessary. Reread the story: I will reread the story having students hold up the image of the vocabulary word when they hear it. I will do the following procedure with all of the words but I demonstrated it below with pancake: Thank you for holding up your pancake picture when you heard the word pancake! What is a pancake? When is a time that people eat pancakes? What things go into making pancakes? Extend Learning: To further students learning I will ask them to think back to independently think back to the food they like to eat in the morning. I will have them draw the different ingredients that go into their favorite food. To extend learning even further, I will ask them to draw or write how some of the ingredients in their favorite foods go from farm to table. Then we will share out emphasizing the farm to table process and how it applies to everything we eat. Summarize Concepts:

Farmers, plants, and animals give us things we need and even things that are really yummy like maple syrup! As we have been learning the farm to table process is very important! Without farm, farmers, plants, and animals there would be nothing in our grocery stores and it would be hard for us to make the things we like to eat. Tyler certainly could not made pancakes without the help of maple trees, chickens, blueberry bushes, cows, and wheat plants and we could not make our favorite foods either! Assessment: To assess student learning I will evaluate their ability to answer questions during and after the read aloud to see how they are doing in terms of comprehension. To assess their understanding of the farm to table concept of the larger unit I will collect their drawings illustrating how their favorite foods go from farm to table. Rationale: I based a lot of what I did in this read aloud off of our class discussions and the videos we watched of people performing read alouds. I put a lot of emphasis on my own reading of the text because I saw in the videos we watched how this could really make or break a lesson. Engaging students was a huge focus of mine because students need to be engaged in order to feel motivated to learn as has been discussed in our text. Furthermore, I incorporated scaffolding because as our book outlines, activating prior knowledge and building upon that facilitates new learning. I chose this book because I saw the cultural merit it has in terms of helping ESL students understand certain topics that are uniquely Vermont such as maple sugaring. In addition, the foods discussed in the book and the ingredients they show coming from farm to table are all relatively unique to this area of the country so I saw how ESL students could gain increased understanding of where they live. I also valued their own cultures and experiences by incorporating their favorite foods so they could feel that aspects of their culture are valued and appreciated in the school environment. Reflection:

Overall, I really underestimated how challenging it can be to pick literature for ESL students to be used in a read aloud. I picked a text that in my prior experiences in mainstream elementary education would have worked exceptionally well but as I started to shift into the ESL educator lens I saw that there were many flaws to my plan. This book contains many domain specific words and thus forced me to have to change the group I would teach the lesson to in order to ensure they had enough prior knowledge to grasp these tier three words. Consequently, this lesson is not accessible to students who have recently began ESL and this book would be a very challenging read aloud with beginners or even intermediates. The population I had originally intended to teach of students who have been in ESL for about a year would definitely struggle with this lesson. I learned a huge lesson and was luckily able to alter who I was teaching the lesson to but in the future this will not be the case. I have seen how tremendously important it is to make the text meet the needs of your students and even then to sit and look through the text as though you are an ESL student. I think some strengths of this type of read aloud are how it enables students to be highly engaged with the material and encourages their input and natural enthusiasm. The repetition of this type of read aloud helps students solidify their understandings and can ensure they are concrete in their thinking. Some weaknesses are that it primarily addresses the needs of visual and audio-lingual learners as well as relying heavily on students listening skills. If their listening skills are not well developed they may be unable to access the majority of the lesson which would be very frustrating for the learner.