Blog #8

Sheltered Lesson

I really enjoyed watching the videos on sheltered lessons this week.  I saw right away that most of the techniques she used are techniques I have observed these past few weeks, and also ones I use with my own class.  It felt good to realize that it is something I already do even though I never knew the correct term for it!  The first thing I notices was the time spent for the lesson on the teachers part.  It looked like the teacher really put in a lot of time and effort to have pictures for vocabulary and the objectives written for the day.  It was a VERY well planned out lesson with her students in mind! 

I really liked how she used many different strategies and teaching techniques to promote comprehension in the video. In the beginning of the class, she used the word inference 3-4 times.  This allowed the students to hear the word over and over and let them know what they were going to be working on for the class.  I liked that she had the students relate things that were happening in the story to real life experiences that they have had. Having visuals of a bouquet and other vocabulary words was effective.  I also think it was an excellent idea to discuss the vocabulary before reading and having students come with synonyms for the words.  When she was talking about the vocabulary word resentment, she would give an example, which then allowed the students to come up synonyms for the word.  After she gave the example of the stereo, a student was able to come up with his own synonym, jealous.  Many times, unknown vocabulary in text can limit a student’s comprehension.  I thought this technique was important in promoting comprehension. I liked the fact that she read clearly and enunciated words or phrases. She also did an excellent job of using repetition to ensure that the students understood.  She did all of this in a very steady pace.  She was not going to slow or fast.  She was keeping the students attention throughout the lesson.  I thought the “confused post-it” was such a neat idea. Students love using anything different from a regular sheet of paper and a pencil.   Having students post what they were confused about with the reading is a great way to get class started and guide the teacher towards difficult areas. 

During the lesson, the students were focused and participating. I noticed that Ms. Krauss had the student's attention, and even with the camera being in the room, they didn’t seem to be distracted. When she asked a question, she always had a response from her students. I think this was in part because she spent a good deal of time helping them connect to their background knowledge. This back and forth with background knowledge was especially important in this lesson, because you must activate your background knowledge in order to infer successfully.  The teacher did a great job of making sure the students were understanding and not lost.  This in return allowed the students to be able to actively participate.

I thought this teacher had many excellent ideas, and I really liked that she used a variety of strategies.  She also had the students name the strategies, which allows them to remember them for later use.  I appreciated in the introduction the professor saying, “It doesn't mean dummying down the curriculum, or using a 3^rd grade picture book for 8^th graders to understand the content." I think that is a huge misconception when teachers hear the term "sheltering."  I felt this video was extremely helpful and gave me great insight as to how a well sheltered lesson should look in the classroom. 

The essential components of a sheltered lesson include pre-reading activities, during reading activities, and post reading activities. Ms. Krauss made time for all three components.  It was clearly stated that teachers should leave room at the end of a lesson in order to review.  This was something the teacher took a fair amount of time with to make sure the students understood.  In the pre-reading, there were lots of vocabulary and prior knowledge building.  The teacher even had the students connect the vocabulary word cowboy to the Spanish word for cowboy.  She used visuals and gave many examples for vocabulary words.  During reading included questioning and guidance in building an inference.  Post reading the students were given the opportunity to record their thinking and post it on their classroom Diary.  The teacher also took time to review to check for understanding.