Student:
Session:
Date: October 24, 2003
Agency: _________ Elementary
Grade level: 1st

Student level of proficiency:
Oral: O’Malley Rubric: 5-6
She speaks fluently and communicates competently in classroom settings. She understands classroom discussion without difficulty. However, she does not have extensive vocabulary, and does not master grammatical structures.
Walter’s Rubric: Intermediate Fluency
She is able to respond with a flow of related phrases and sentences. She engages in discourse, and communicates her thoughts effectively.

Reading: O’Malley Rubric: Emergent
She pretends to read, and uses illustrations to tell the story. She is comfortable reading familiar books, and knows some letter sounds. She memorizes pattern books, and familiar books. She can recognize some names or words in context.
O’Malley ESL Rubric: Emerging Reader
She participates in choral reading, and uses visuals to facilitate meaning. She is beginning to retell familiar, predictable text, and uses some phonics and word structure to decode, although this is at an early stage.

Writing: O’Malley Rubric: 1 Emerging to 2 Beginning
She shows little evidence of idea development or organization. She uses single words, pictures, or patterned phrases, but uses phonetic spelling. She has some awareness of punctuation and capitalization, and uses limited vocabulary.
O’Malley ELL Rubric: Level 1 to Level 2
She draws pictures to convey meaning, but is starting to write simple sentences and phrases. She spells inventively, but often shows no sign of letter-sound correspondence.

Rationale for choosing this activity:
I chose this activity because it helps my tutee with many areas she is behind in, such as sound-letter correspondence, and connecting meaning to words. Her teacher stresses the importance of connecting meaning to written words. She wants the children to learn how to express their ideas about what they read, and have them begin to think deeply about the content of the stories. During shared writing she gets them to answer questions and make predictions. She wanted me to work on these things with my tutee, and I thought that this lesson coincided nicely with the teacher’s curriculum.

Materials:
Colored construction paper
Pens, crayons, and colored pencils
Regular pencil
Glue stick
Scissors
Stapler
Lined writing paper

Lesson Objectives:
The objective of this lesson is for my tutee to be able to practice her reading, reading comprehension, and her sound-letter correspondence in relation to writing. I would also like for her to further understand the idea that words have meaning. This lesson will also incorporate the concepts of print, because she will be the author and illustrator, while creating an entire book all by herself. Therefore, it also gives her a chance to be creative, artistic, and make something that she feels good about, and can be proud of. She will be able to read it over and over again, knowing that she wrote it all herself.

ELD Standards the lesson will address:
Writing: Strategies and Applications: Beginning to early intermediate
She will copy words posted and commonly used in the classroom, and she will write simple sentences.

Conventions: Beginning to early intermediate
She will use capital letters to begin sentences, and use a period or question mark at the end of each sentence.

Anticipatory Set-Into-Motivation:
To spark her interest, we will first talk about reading. I will ask her what her favorite book is, and why she likes it. After this, we will read a book together to help her get ideas of what to write about. I will have her tell me what the book was about to practice her reading comprehension.

Instruction/Guided Practice:
I will have my tutee write simple sentences about the book we read, or about her own experiences. I will explain how there will be one to two sentences per page, and an illustration above each sentence. At the end of the lesson I will “bind” the “book” together by stapling the construction paper together. Each piece of construction paper will be the backing for the lined paper she will write and draw on. She will use the glue to stick the lined pieces of paper onto the colored paper. When she is finished, there should be about four to five pages of simple sentences and illustrations.

Check for Understanding:
To assess my tutee’s comprehension, I will have her read her book back to me, and tell me why she wrote and drew what she did. I will also review the concepts of print with her again. I want to make sure she understands the elements of a book, and that she relates meaning to written text.

Closure:
For the closure of the lesson, I will have my tutee read her book to the class. This will support her confidence and self-esteem, along with allowing her to practice her reading.

Reflection on Implementation:

Strengths: She started her sentences with capital letters, and used some good vocabulary from her word list, such as “because.” She was excited to learn and patient with the process. My tutee does not get easily frustrated.

Weaknesses: She still reads a lot by memorization. While writing, she put random capitals in some words, and used little punctuation. Some of her sentences did not make sense, and she is still having trouble phonetically spelling words, along with sound-letter correspondence.

What I would change: I would have focused her away from spending so much time on the illustrations, and guide her more with her writing. She loves to draw, and that is why I added it into the activity, but she enjoyed it so much that she wanted to draw more and write less. Since she is still having so many problems writing, though, it would have been better to keep her attention on the writing part of the lesson.

Connection to Current Course Theories:
There are several main ideas we have discussed in class that relate to my lesson. One is the theory of affective filter. This activity created a very low affective filter for my tutee and me. We have a great relationship anyway, and she is always excited to work with me, but she had a lot of fun doing this project. It made writing seem more enjoyable because she was creating her own “book” out of it. It was also hands-on learning. She was practicing necessary skills, such as sound-letter correspondence and relating meaning to writing, but she was also having fun while learning because it was a hands-on artistic project.
This lesson was also part of experiential education, because it was meaningful and relevant to her life. She uses books everyday while in school, and now she was able to make one herself. This gave her an idea of the process an author and illustrator go through while creating a new story. Finally, this lesson was taught in context. I made a point to include in the lesson the idea that words have meaning. Her teacher discusses this with the class everyday, so I added it as well in order to further her understanding. Since she was able to choose what to write about, it also made the lesson more meaningful, and furthered the aspect of contextual learning.