Video

I taped myself teaching a recipricol reading activity. I discussed the importance of recipricol reading and the steps involved. I took questions, and involved the class in both whole and small group discussions regarding previewing, and summarizing. I then chose a student and modeled the steps of recipricol reading. Then I had the students get with thier fluency partner. This is a person that is at a similar reading level, and is their regular partner for similar activities. They selected which person would be partner "A" and which person would be partner "B". They then previewed the text and generated questions. The students read a piece from thier Harcourt Reading Test that involved the science behind seeds. I felt that a non-fiction text would be the best type of reading material for such an activity.

The students were engaged. All students were on task. They seemed to understand the directions. The video helped me to see that I sometimes misinterpret student responses. I am also aware that I need to give power to the students more so that I am more of a facilitator of a student generated conversation. I also am not at all happy with how the modeling went. I need to figure out a way to model it withough it being boring and a one on one experience. Perhaps I should have done one step, and then had the other partners echo that step immediately following me.

I had one student that did not take part in the reflection part of the lesson. I did not address the fact that she was on the floor cleaning out her desk, while the rest of the class was talking about what they learned from the text, as well as what they felt were the pros and cons to recipricol reading. I was mortified to see what she was doing and avoided saying anything because it was being taped. In retrospect, I should have stopped the behavior immediately, regardless of what was taking place. This student is a severe behavior problem a great deal of the time. I did address the problem after I quit filming.

I am unable to post the video to this page. According to this page, my lesson file is too large. It is 295MB. From what I understand, the free version of this wiki only allows files that are 10MB. I hope that I am not incorrect in this assumption. I do have the movie made in moviemaker, and saved as a WMV file. I will bring both my flip camera as well as my computer.