Classroom Modeling: KindergartenREAD 680Jennifer Eubank

For this model lesson, I contacted a kindergarten teacher and asked her if I could model a

lesson for her that focused on a specific need or area of weakness for her students. She noted

that Concept of Word was an area that students were struggling with based on PALs benchmark

data. She also noted that her students’ displayed an area of need for this area almost every year.

I chose to model this lesson for the teacher to provide support and ideas for developing her

students’ Concept of Word skills such as pointing. My lesson objectives directly covered one

oral language SOL standard and three reading SOL standards.

I chose a variety instructional techniques to incorporate in my lesson such as modeling

finger-pointing, choral reading, echo reading, and using non-linguistic representations/pictures. I

incorporated all of these techniques in my lesson because they are backed by research as

techniques that help improve students’ Concept of Word development. Also, the techniques

allowed me to scaffold the practice of these skills for the students. First, by modeling finger-

pointing, students were able to visualize my expectations and concentrate on listening to the

words. Second, I used non-linguistic representations/pictures while students were learning the

rhyme to support students in memorizing the text. The focus of Concept of Word is skills such

as pointing; therefore, students should not be focused on decoding in COW lessons. Next, I

incorporated choral reading with the students to provide guided practice of reading the rhyme.

Lastly, I incorporated echo reading as a technique to further scaffold the reading for the students.

The students were able to listen to a line of the rhyme and then repeat after me independently.

While observing my model lesson, I hope the teacher understood how I used a variety of

reading scaffolding techniques with a rhyme to keep students engaged and actively participating

throughout the entire lesson. In past observations, I noticed that the teacher does a really nice

job of modeling fluent reading and uses choral reading with the students with books; however,

she very rarely uses non-linguistic representations or other reading techniques, such as echo

reading, to support the students in their COW development. For example, in small-groups, she

usually introduced a new text, modeled reading once through, and then asked the students to

choral read with her. In these lessons, decoding was a focus and students were not receiving

scaffolded instruction to meet their Concept of Word needs. I believe that her students this year

would benefit from additional reading techniques and non-linguistic representations to support

and improve their Concept of Word development.

After I completed my model lesson, I was able to discuss what the classroom teacher liked

and what she thought were effective parts of the lesson. She really liked the format of the lesson

plan and the idea of starting with pictures. I shared with the teacher that my lesson followed a

similar format to the PALs Concept of Word lesson. I explained to the teacher that the students

were engaged in the echo reading and 3 out of the 4 students were effectively finger-pointing the

poem by the end of our lesson. I supplied the teacher with Concept of Word lesson plan

information from the PALs website and a copy of my lesson plan with the reading techniques in

bold. I encouraged the teacher to continue to implement and use these reading techniques during

reading in her small-group instruction because she believed it would be effective for her

students. I also provided the teacher with a list of resources for activities that support Concept of

Word development for emergent learners.

In the future, I would continue to support this teacher in her instructional methods by

providing her with additional ideas for activities that support Concept of Word development.

These ideas would be feasible for the classroom teacher. I would encourage the teacher to

implement these techniques during her small-group time with these students and also during her

whole-group poem/rhyme time with the rest of her students. If requested, I could complete a

second model lesson to model incorporating these various techniques and activities with other

rhymes.

Model Lesson Pictures

This picture shows me explaining to the small-group that they should turn their listening ears on and watch as I point to each picture.

This picture shows me modeling finger-pointing and choral reading with the students.

This picture shows me modeling finger-pointing and echo reading with the students.