Mini Lessons- Molly

For my mini lessons I worked with a group of three of the more struggling students. We played a game that had them naming and discussing the names of the letters and their sounds. They would draw a card that was face down and if they were able to name the letter and tell me what sound it made they got to keep the card. Since it is towards the end of the year these students did very well with the game. After the game we did a letters worksheet that had them placing the correct letter in the blank... for instance there was a picture of a bat and they had "_at" on the worksheet they would then sound out the word "bat" and place the "b" in the blank. As for strategies, I really made the students sound out the words on their own. If they were unable to do this I would say the word and had them These students have really made progress throughout the year. These were activities that would never have been able to be accomplished the first semester.

For my second mini lesson I worked with a student on reading "Go Dog, Go!". We first just practiced the reading. If the student was unable to figure out the word, we would "karate chop" it. This means using our hands in karate motions while saying each syllable. Then most of the time he was able to put the word together just by that strategy. After reading the story, we went back and found all the opposites. After that I had him try to think of some other opposites. When he struggled to find more I would say "hot" and then he would say "cold". So just by a little scaffolding he was able to discover other opposites that weren't present in the book.