A Final Thought: Reflection 2 (Fluency Lesson Plan)

Well here it is, the final blog post reflecting on my last lesson of this year. This was a fairly simple lesson to perform and it went well. I had students take their independent reading book and then recorded them reading. This way they could hear themselves as they read, and we could talk about ways to improve their fluency. I noticed that students had a fun time doing this lesson. They enjoyed hearing themselves, and were able to improve their prosody within just a short time period of working with me. I think because I modeled the proper reading fluency, and then allowed the students to practice and hear themselves they were able to understand and hear where they needed improvement. This was a cool lesson, because I was able to see improvement happening and the students could tell they were improving in their reading fluency skills.

I think one limitation of this lesson was not having students read from the same text. I think that if students could have been able to read in a small group aloud and had their voices recorded on top of that, the lesson could have been a lot more beneficial. It would have been a great way to utilize other student’s reading skills during my lesson, but I did not have the resources in order to do this, so for what the lesson was, it went well.

I feel a strength to this lesson was the individual support that these students received. The students seemed to understand my objectives, and because they were receiving direct attention they were able to practice and adjust with little time in between. If this was a whole class lesson, students would have to of had to wait until they could have their voice recorded, talk about their reading strengths and weakness, adjust, and then after all that read and record themselves again. The small group element added ease to the lesson, and as a result I feel made the lesson stronger.  

I noticed that I am getting stronger in lesson planning. My lessons are starting to be more concise and follow a set protocol. I am pleased in my growth, although I know I still need a lot more practice and guidance in order to become a great teacher. I also noticed that my patience and problem solving skills are improving greatly. A few times I thought I was asking a question to the students clearly, but I could tell after a quick assessment for understanding that I needed to reword my question in order for the students to understand what I was asking. I think this is a great thing to be aware of, and takes practice to master.

I would like to continue to monitor these students reading fluency’s. The students did a great job during my lesson, and it would be great to see if they transferred what we talked about during my lesson to their everyday reading. With the end of the year approaching I can only hope that these students will continue to practice what they learned during these mini lessons, because I feel it can be incredibly beneficial to their future literacy development.