Teaching Reading: Lewis and Clark

Today was my second day of teaching Reading. This week they are reading Lewis and Clark and Me. Yesterday, we made a class KWL chart on Lewis and Clark. Most of the students were unfamiliar with using a KWL chart but they caught on pretty quickly. The students were very engaged in creating the chart. They shared what they knew about Lewis and Clark and things that they wondered. After creating the sections K and W on the chart I had the students preview the book, looking at the pictures and seeing if they had any other questions they wanted to put on the chart. We then read through the story, keeping the questions from the chart in mind. This KWL chart part of the lesson went very well but the reading, not so much. The students were constantly fidgeting, looking around the room, staring off in space, putting their heads down and even falling asleep, they were not following along. I was randomly calling on students to read and most of the time they had no idea where we were. It was becoming very frustrating so today I thought I wold try something new while we read. Today while we read I had the students stand up, face me and hold their books. I told the students that they sit all day so let’s stand while we read today. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not but it ended up working. Students were not falling asleep or fidgeting in their desk. I did have some students trying to lean on the desk with their elbows and sit on the desk but I just walked around and touched their shoulders asking them to not lean or sit on the desks, just stand. I do believe this helped with their focus and woke them up a little. Every student that I called on knew where we were and were paying attention. It was a short reading so they only stood for about 10 minutes at most. I prefer having the whole class stand because if I have students stand up individually when they are not following along or falling asleep it is possible that it would be embarrissing to the the students and I am not trying to embarress them, just simply get them to focus better. We continued reading Lewis and Clark and Me today and then when we finished the students worked on maps and making map legends. The students did very well with this lesson, followed directions and behaved. They were also being very creative with their map legends. We did not finish the map today but we will finish it tomorrow after we review.