IT 573 - Dinosaurs NTeQ Unit Day 2

Today was a much better day! I spent some time yesterday revising today's lesson a bit (I relate this to Dewey's philosophy - the development of our own plasticity).

After yesterday I felt like I knew the students much better! Four more joined us this morning.

The lesson began with a new "Did you know?" fact followed by today's goals. I informally surveyed students about yesterday's vocabulary activities at the Smart Board. Again I received very positive feedback.

We then separated into our two guided reading groups. Our discussion began with a quick review of our vocabulary words. Each student took his or her turn at the Smart Board matching the correct vocabulary word with its definition. I then passed out our guided reading books. Ours was titled Dinosaurs. Students took a picture walk. We discussed the genre of the text based upon our picture walk. One student suggested that the book was based on facts about dinosaurs. The rest of the students agreed, but they had difficult deciding if that was non-fiction or fiction. We spent some time discussing the difference.

We discussed different parts of the book: table of contents, index. I read the text aloud. We stopped to discuss our vocabulary words when we came across them. We highlighted context clues in the text. At the end of the text, each student shared one fact he or she learned about dinosaurs. The most difficult part for students seemed to be remembering how to pronounce the dinosaur's name.

I passed out a slip of paper to each student. Each slip of paper had a discussion question on it. Students took turns asking the entire group the question on the sheet of paper. After our group discussion, students wrote a reflection into their journals. Their journal entry was a response to the following questions: What did you learn today from the book your group read together? What surprised you about dinosaurs?

When students finished they took turns matching vocabulary words and completing a crossword puzzle on the Smart Board.

I am going to spend some time later today creating a concept map. I am planning to make the concept map interactive. I would like to use the concept map as a review of the text after tomorrow's lesson. Mrs. Pieper suggested creating cloze sentences for her group to use tomorrow as a review.

My goal is to help students comprehend text and understand vocabulary by using the Smart Board.

Tomorrow we will use the rubric to assess student participation in the guided reading discussion.