week 6 assignment #1

Mr. Caufal’s teaching overall

In my view, Mr. Caufal was a very confident man, I believed it rooted from his teaching experiences. He understood the main purpose in 5^th grade level and chosen the worth reading news for his students. The text he chosen not only did relate to a unit of study but also was complex enough to push his students to learn.

He picked up the important words to help students have connection between big idea and main idea. Through his observation, he offered the same complex text to students, but divided students to different groups according to the amount of text that the students work with. Mr. Caufal tried to use variety of strategies to engage student learning, in this case he gave them a time to move around the class to read posters and made them have chance to exchange their thoughts and learned from their peers. From this example, the close reading strategy enabled students credibility and let them embrace the challenge willingly.

Instruction Procedure

• First half of class, everyone had a seat at desk.

1. Let one recite loudly about their first target to have all students focus. He asked students to catch important words even in topic to lure their interest.

2. Recall students’ experience of the close reading to enhance their skills.

3. Asked students to read entire text without stopping, encouraged them to show their perseverance.

4. Reread the text and circled the words that students recognized they were important or they didn’t understand.

5. Wrote down the gist for each paragraph in margin. (From the video an assistant teacher helped the small group separately)

6. Asked them to write down the main idea in back sheet in short time.

• Second half of class, students transited to carpet area.

1. After reading, thinking and writing, he started a session for students talking about the text. As first half of class, he asked a student reciting the second learning target.

2. Students paired to share their opinions about what the main idea is in article and one sentence that helped students to come up the main idea.  

3. He chosen the important details written in posters and hung them in classroom respectively. Allow students to move around the classroom to read the text and write down on post about this is important or not to connect the main idea. During this process.

4. Students went back to carpet and shared their thinking in a debrief to synthesize understanding.

Informal assessment

1.      Can students read all text independently?

2.      Can students circle out the new vocabulary without assistance?

3.      Can students jot their initial sense of text, at least paragraph by paragraph?

4.      Can students team up with the other classmate and express their ideas?

5.      When students circulate in class, do they participate well? Can they explain the questions from posters? Do their answers make connections to main idea?

During carpet session, can students share their thinking targeted the main idea?