Daryl Burke
EDUC 342
Lesson Plan and Reflection 5
Building a Bridge by Ned Jensen, Level I
Objective



Summarize in order to understand text
Identify time-order words
Sequence events
Introduce and Connect
Ask the students what they know about bridges. Ask them about bridges they have seen or been
on. Ask them if they know any of the bridges with names that are well known. Show the book
to the students. Let them read the title and author. Let them look at the pages. Ask the students
if they know or have heard the word summary. Can they define it?
Teach the Skill
Tell the students that summarizing is a reading strategy. By summarizing they can better
understand the text. When you summarize something, you are retelling the information, but only
retelling the most important parts and leaving out tiny details. You have to decide what
information is most important. Give an example by summarizing The Three Little Pigs. The
Three Little Pigs is a story about three pigs who build three houses. The big bad wolf blows the
first to houses down, but he cannot blow down the third house because the third pig build a
strong house and he and his brothers live happily ever after.
Apply the Skill in Context
Read the first page and summarize it for the students. Read the second page and summarize it
for the students. Call on the first student to read. After reading their page, have them summarize
it. Let each student call on the next student to read. Let them each read twice, all of them
summarizing their pages. Finish reading the book and summarize the last five pages for the
students. When finished, ask the students if summarizing after they read helped them remember
the text. Next, ask the students what time-order words are. Write the time-order words on the
marker board. Time order words help us understand when things happen and in what order.
Did you notice that the book used many time-order words like first, then, next, and finally?
Time-order words help us sequence things. When we sequence things we put them in order.
Like first to last. Let me give you an example using sequence and time-order words. Explain the
process of making a bowl of cereal and finally getting to eat it. Have the students circle some of
the time-order words with a crayon in their text. Let the students work together to write How to
Build a Bridge on their worksheet using time-order words.
Write and Share
On the back of their worksheets, individually, let the students choose something that they do to
write about using time-order words. Then let them draw a picture that goes with their sentences
and share. At the end of the lesson, ask the students if they can define summary, sequence, and
time-order words. Also ask for examples of time-order words.
Date 4/24/2014
School Columbia
Teacher Mrs. Groesbeck
Grade Level 1
Name of Book Building a Bridge
Level Level 16 DRA; Reading A to Z Level I
1. What was the area of focus today during the lesson? What activities related to the
area of focus did the teacher include in the lesson today?
The focus was on summarizing, sequence, and time-order words. First, the students read
the text and summarized each page as well as the book as a whole. Then, the students
had to write about the bridge building process using time-order words. We were not able
to get to the individual write and share, but did review the three things that were taught.
2. What went well with the instruction? What did students learn?
The students did learn how to summarize and they said that it helped them remember
what they read much better. It was difficult to keep the students attention at times and I
am not sure of the best way to keep a first grader’s attention. Saying their names and
moving on worked well enough for today. I think the examples were helpful and the kind
of examples that they could understand and relate to. When I put the time-order words
on the marker board the students asked if they could write them in the note page in their
books and they did.
3. Explain a “growth” moment for yourself where you realized, learned, or confirmed
something from today dealing with student achievement in the area of reading.
(phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension,
before/during/after reading)
The during reading strategy of summarizing worked well. They were more engaged with
the text and more alert. I think the fact that they had to do something with the text as
they read it was super helpful. There was a lot of bridge specific vocabulary in the book,
but amazingly, the students did very well with pronouncing unfamiliar words regardless
of the meaning.
4. Describe a moment when a student grasped an idea/concept-that “got it!” kind of
moment. How was the teacher able to facilitate this experience? Explain the
situation.
I cannot read the students minds so I do not know how much the summarizing helped
them. However, when asked if it helped, they all quickly and enthusiastically responded
with an affirmative. It gave me a nice feeling that they all said it was helpful to them. I
think I see more moments of understanding in the students when they are prompted to
speak about their understanding.