Phonics and Comprehension Video

              This video displays an amazing example of both a phonics review and a reading comprehension lesson in a second grade class. From the start, I loved the teacher’s approach to teaching. During the phonics review, the teacher reviews how different letters sound together. She does an amazing job explaining nouns and proper nouns with examples. Having a quick review like this, even for second graders, could really be beneficial for all students, but especially those students who have not yet mastered these difficult concepts.

              During the comprehension lesson, the students were engaged at all times. The teacher has the students make a prediction and talk about the genre of their story during partner sharing. They come back together and then discussed each topic before moving onto the next. The teacher calls on individual students to share their ideas. While reading as a group, the teacher asks the students how the characters feel and expects students to answer in complete sentences while doing so. The teacher follows a flow chart model on the whiteboard and works with the students to complete it as they are reading the story. This works as a great visual for all students to refer to throughout the lesson.

             Throughout the entire video, the teacher uses whole brain teaching techniques, including attention grabbers and partner sharing. I especially appreciate how the teacher gets the class back to a whole group conversation with quick queues and attention grabbers. As teachers, we know that when students actively participate in conversation or reflection of a story and discuss their ideas, they are more likely to retain information about the story. This also helps them to make more connections. As a whole, this video gave me awesome ideas to keep students engaged, while also teaching them valuable lessons to foster reading development.