Observation Report #4

TC Name: Katie Schmucker

RICA Domain: Vocabulary, Academic Language, and Background Knowledge

RICA Competency: Vocabulary and Fluency

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Any Additional Descriptors: Class contains no ELL students or students with disabilities

INSTRUCTION:

                I observed Mrs. G teaching her class pre-reading vocabulary to assist in their reading fluency. She began her lesson by telling the class that they were going to read a story together about farms. Mrs. G activated student’s prior knowledge by posing a series of questions about farms to her kindergarteners: “Have you ever been to a farm?” “What animals live on a farm?” What types of food come from a farm?” “What sounds do farm animals make?” She listened to her student’s responses and showed them images of things you would find on a farm.

                Mrs. G then pointed to the cover of the large poster entitled At the Farm. The class looked at this together to go over key farm vocabulary before reading. Mrs. G then read each word on the page to the class. She used a long finger pointer and pointed to each word on the page to help the students with concepts about print reading procedures. After reading the sentences on the page, Mrs. G returned to the three underlined words: farm, feed, carrot. She repeated each word slowly and then had the class repeat each word twice.

                She then explained the definitions of each word. She had already covered “farm” in her anticipatory set when she activated prior knowledge. She added on to that definition by explaining that a farm is a place but that the word can also mean “to farm” as an action. She explained the word “feed” by showing the class pictures of different farm animals feeding their young. She explained the word carrot by holding up actual carrots. While everyone in the class was familiar with what a carrot is, seeing the word written and knowing how to recognize it in print was probably unfamiliar to many students.

                After going over the vocabulary, Mrs. G had the class choral read At the Farm with her one more time. She then got out the book Old MacDonald Has a Farm. She asked the class if they had ever heard of this book or the song before. She then played the song from a Youtube video that had the words typed on the images in the video. After watching the video the teacher sing-song read the book to the class.

                Her final activity involved reviewing the key vocabulary and giving children a piece of paper to write the following sentence on: “Farmers feed horses carrots on the farm.” After they copied the sentence on the provided lines, they were asked to draw a picture of a farmer feeding his horse carrots on a farm.

INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:

Within the instructional setting I observed Mrs. G using many resources to teach her lesson. Some of these resources included a long finger pointer, a large poster book, the internet, visual aids, real carrots, printed sheets divided for writing and drawing and of course the narrative text.