Reading Lesson 1 MARTINA

For this first reading lesson I had the opportunity to lead a social studies lesson that focused on the idea of comprehension; the students learned about the difference between a primary source and a secondary source and how to use them. We started out by reading two pages from the Social Studies textbook and then proceeded to discuss various scenarios described on a worksheet to categorize what the sources would be- primary or secondary. During this lesson I focused in on two students- one of whom is excelling in school and one of whom is struggling in the class. The one who is excelling is very diligent at his work- he will utilize his textbook to find answers to work given to him, which is unusual in the class, as well as he isn’t shy to come up and ask questions as necessary on assignments. The other student has a very hard time in class- his head is usually down and he doesn’t put in much effort on his work. On this particular day his head was down and we ended up doing the worksheet together during recess. On this assignment the first student did well. He understood the difference between a primary source and a secondary source right off the bat; as we went through the scenarios he was constantly raising his hand to participate and answer the questions being asked, and when I graded his work he had done very well. The second student was not participating during the lesson, which was frustrating, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find that working with him one on one he picked up very quickly the difference between the sources, and he was participating with me as I asked him the questions. I think that he just needed someone to reexplain the topic to him, because as soon as I started working with him he did have some questions about what the textbook had to say. Overall I thought that this lesson was a success- the students had read the textbook and were able to take off on the assignment that I gave them, and even the student who was in fact struggling with the assignment understood it after I explained it to him a second time, showing that they had in fact comprehended what they read.