Assignment 5 - Exploring Standards-Based Lesson Plans

(The worksheet for the Rhyming with Sam I Am lesson)

Hi! This week we're examining lesson plans for our target grade/subject, analyzing their placement within the Ohio standards, and describing how we would implement the lesson in our own classrooms. Since I'm going into early childhood education, I have a range of both grades and subjects to choose from. The lesson plan I chose, Rhyming with Sam I Am, is a kindergarten literacy and language activity. If you've been following this blog, you know that literacy is a passion of mine, so that's where I chose to focus my attention this week. In Rhyming with Sam I Am, the teacher reads Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, out loud to her class, placing a special emphasis on the rhyming words. She then leads a class activity, where she helps her students write down the story's rhyming words on the board. When that is done, she presents her students with flash cards that have words and pictures on them. She guides the students in an activity where they sort the flash cards, matching words with their pictures and their rhyming pairs. After this, the class goes into individual time, and works on a rhyming worksheet.

(Two standards addressed by the lesson.)

This lesson is designed specifically for Ohio learning standard RF.K.2, which states that children should "demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and phonemes;" specifically, it focuses on section a, which says that students should "recognize and produce rhyming words." This standard, the second in Reading Foundational skills, is incredibly important to building literate students. The lesson also assists with other sections of RF.K.2, particularly that of isolating sounds in words. Other kindergarten literacy and language standards supported by the lesson include RF.K.3, involving phonological awareness and word recognition, and RL.K.10, involving the ability to engage in group reading activities. In listening for and pointing out rhyming words, students are actively engaging in the text. In the activities afterward, they can be encouraged to produce rhymes of their own, and to challenge their knowledge of phonemes and words.

(Some ways to adjust the lesson for students at different levels.)

In utilizing this lesson in my classroom, I would encourage engagement with the text by employing dialogue reading. Dialogue (or dialogic) reading is a reading strategy where a caregiver or teachers asks questions about the text and encourages the child to become the teller of the story. Although the method would need some adaptation for use in a classroom setting (as opposed to one-on-one), I think it would be particularly effective in this lesson, especially in drawing students' attention to rhyming words. I anticipate that some students might have trouble staying still and paying attention to the story, so I would make a special effort to engage them. If I had multiple copies of the book, I would encourage children to read along, as I feel this can help their own reading develop. I would also take opportunities to extend the lesson, by encouraging students to come up with rhyming words they didn't see in the text, and answering questions they may have about words like "orange" or "silver," two of many English words with no rhyme of their own. If my classroom taught a foreign language (which I believe all kindergarten classrooms should), I would focus that day's language lesson on rhymes in that language. Although Rhyming with Sam I Am is a simple lesson, I believe it could be used in unique, engaging ways.