lesson 2 realistic fiction

Lesson 2:
What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?
To start off my second lesson, I showed the students a couple nonfiction books, realistic fiction books and fantasy books. The students struggled to identify books that were realistic fiction and ones that were not. When asked what elements of realistic fiction they remembered from Monday’s lesson, one child remembered “characters,” but the class could not come up with any of the others without being prompted. Some students suggested that having real pictures made a book realistic fiction. (This was one of the features we covered in our nonfiction unit so it was obvious that these students were over generalizing.)
I taught the “six elements” song help students remember the elements. Then we took a picture walk through the book to figure out specific examples of each element. When identifying the specific characters, setting etc. the students were able to remember quite a bit of details.
· What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products?
I walked away from this lesson feeling that my first lesson had been a total flop because students didn’t seem to remember anything we covered on Monday, however the fact that the previous lesson had been taught two days ago could have had some effect on what they remembered.
· What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?
Even though I did the picture walk before I had students help me brain storm specific examples of the elements in book I read on Monday, they still surprised me with how much detail they had remembered about the story. Some of them wanted to share details that did not relate to the elements.
· When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?
It seems that reminding the students of the elements will be something that we will have to work on quite a bit more. The song really did seem effective and I plan to use that again. I also noticed students struggling to identify the theme of the book. To help student pick out the themes I will continue to model it and try to choose books that express very strong themes in order to make it easier for my students.
· If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?
For the most part I thought this lesson went much better than my first one but I still wish I could make the lessons more engaging to my hard to focus students. If it was more engaging the students that have a hard time focusing would be more in tune to what the class is learning about and in turn less of a distraction to others students.