Celina_CO #2

For my second classroom observation I sat in on Josh's level 3 reading class. Originally the class had planned to go to the library since it was a Friday, but the weather was not permitting and so they settled for reading in the classroom instead. They have been reading Gary Paulsen's "The Hatchet" for the past few weeks. The book is in a simplified version for easier reading, but still had some complicated vocabulary words. Josh uses the extensive reading approach for his class, but instead of having the students free-read out loud or to themselves, he reads to them. I thought this was really interesting and wasn't sure how effective it could be at first. Josh later explained to me that he uses this approach so as to avoid any confusion with pronunciation. The students were allowed to interrupt Josh while he was reading at any point to ask about word definitions. They seemed to really enjoy this form of reading. Josh let me read some parts of the book to the class. At first I was definitely reading too fast for the class to follow along, but eventually I think I got the right pace. I even got to help explain some vocab words to the students.
After about 45 minutes of reading, Josh let the students take a break for about 15 minutes because they seemed to be getting bored with the reading. When we all re-convened the students were split up into two teams and started to play a game. Josh would write a word from one of the assigned readings on the board and one student from each team would have to guess what the word was while their teammates tried to explain the word without actually saying it. This game was AWESOME! It was such a great way to learn new words and have the students basically teach each other definitions and such. I am so glad I got to sit in on this class and learn how to run this game, I will certainly be using it as a teaching tool in the future.