C&T 4133 2017.02.

17 Mini Reading Lesson for Helen Wong

Teaching Point: When strong readers come across a word they dont know, they keep reading to
get clues on what the word might mean.

Connection:
Readers, have you ever seen a mystery show where you have to find clues to solve the
mystery? Well when you look for clues you need to look everywhere. Its the same when you
are reading a book and come across a word that you dont know. It is a mystery!! How can we
solve that mystery? Instead of stopping at that word, we can keep reading to find clues about
what it might mean! Since weve been reading non-fiction books together, this could be a
really important skill to know as we will come across words we dont know all the time!

Teach:
Today, Im going to show you that when strong readers come across a word they dont
know, one of the ways they look for clues is to keep reading. Oftentimes if you keep
reading, in the sentences that follow, you will get clues that will help you understand that word
that you dont know.

Lets start off by reading this book that I found together. The book I chose was Koalas by
Valerie Bodden. I chose this book because my daughter just had her first birthday and she got
a stuffed animal that was a Koala bear. So when I saw this book, it got my attention and I
grabbed it to read. So are you ready to learn about Koalas with me? Lets start by previewing
this book. If I flip through this book, I see there are words each time I flip the pages and there
are lots of pictures. It looks like we will learn a lot by reading. Lets start with the first page.
(First sentence is showing but following sentences are covered with post-its). Koalas are
round, furry animals. They are marsupials (mar-SOO-pee-uhlz). Hmm, that is a really hard
word and Im not sure what it means but you know what I notice? I think the author knew that
it would be a hard word because she put parenthesis after the word and showed us how to
pronounce it mar-SOO-pee-uhlz. Wow you know, this is such a hard word and Im not sure
what it means but instead of stopping here and getting stuck, I think Im going to keep reading
to look for clues about what it might mean. Lets keep reading. (Remove post-its). That
means that mother koalas have a pouch on their belly to hold their babies. Oh wow I think
Ive gotten some clues about what marsupial means now. It means that the mother koala has a
pouch on her belly to hold her baby. Do you know any other animal that also has a pouch on
their belly to hold their baby? Yes, Im thinking of a Kangaroo too! So do you think a
Kangaroo is a marsupial too? Wow I love that we can make a connection to this book and also
that we learned a really important fact. Now we know that Koalas AND kangaroos are
marsupials.
Now that Ive tried to read one page by looking for clues by reading onwards, lets try to do it
again on another page together. (First sentence is showing but following sentences are
covered with post-its). Are you ready to try it with me? Lets read it together. Most mother
koalas have one joey at a time. Hmm, thats a hard word what is a joey? I see that the author
has bolded the word here. Do you recognize the non-fiction text feature that she has used?
Yes, she has used bold font to show an important word. Lets read on to get clues on what a
joey is. (Remove post-its). The joey is the size of a jellybean when it is born! The joey
crawls into its mothers pouch. When it gets bigger, it comes out. What clues have we found
here by reading onwards? Do you have any clues about what a joey is? You think its a baby?
Why do you think that? Oh yes the word born is a clue that the joey is actually a baby. In
fact, if I remove this last post-it, we can see that the author has defined joey as a baby koala
at the bottom of the page. Im so excited to see that when we came across a hard word,
instead of getting stuck, we kept reading to find clues about what it might mean!

Engagement:
Now its your turn to try being a detective and looking for clues by reading onwards. I want
you to go back to your desks and for the book monitors to get the non-fiction book baskets.
Everyone should find a book that you want to read and then, if you come across a word you
dont know, I want you to write it on a post-it. Then keep reading so you can get clues to find
out what it might mean. Once you know what it means, you can write the meaning on your
post-it too!

Link:
So readers, I just want to tell you how excited I was to see so many students finding wonderful
words that were mysteries and then continuing to read to find clues on what it might mean.
Remember, strong readers keep reading when they come across a word they dont know, so
that they can find clues about what it might mean!
Reflection

Teaching this mini lesson was such a joy because it led to a level of engagement in the
students that isnt always there in full reading lessons. In general, the class I work in has
difficulty staying focused during full reading lessons but when I taught this mini lesson, I seemed
to hold the attention of the students as they were very engaged in trying to figure out what a
marsupial was (it was a mystery to us all) and what a joey was (some kids already knew what a
joey was so I asked them not to give it away). I think it was due to the focused and quick nature
of the showing or demonstration that allowed the children to get the pointers they needed in a
short amount of time so they could remain focused.
During independent reading time when they had a
chance to try out their new skill, the students were so
excited to find words they hadnt known before and
were busy showing me and my CT all the wonderful
words they hadnt known previously on their post-its.
One student, Josiah* showed me that he had written
down the term Mygalomorph on his post-it as the
scientific name for a spider, definitely a word that I
did not know, and would not anticipate a first grader
to know. So I shared with him that I didnt know
what that meant and how powerful his reading skills
were that he could read that word and figure it out. I
had another student, Eric* come up to me and we
figured out by reading onwards that sleet is a kind
of freezing rain. I even had two students, Fiona* and
Joanne* who came up to me and asked me for the
Koala book I had read as they wanted to try reading it
for themselves.
Teaching this mini lesson taught me how simple,
short and focused a lesson can be and yet it can retain equivalent effectiveness and impact to the
reading lives of my students as a full reading lesson. Especially with this class, which seems to
have a shorter attention span than my prior placement class, the mini lesson format seemed to
work well in commanding their attention for a short amount of time.
In addition, teaching this lesson with the connection of a mystery seemed to really engage
the students as well. They became so excited to see me solve the mystery of what a marsupial
was and were very engaged in determining what a joey was together with me. I think this led to
the engaging work they did independently in finding words they didnt know as we evidenced by
the plethora of post-its I saw which were jam packed with words that I myself didnt know. As a
result, Im looking forward to teaching my next mini reading lesson.

* Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identity of students mentioned in this reflection.