Lesson Plans

    During my practicum, I had the opportunity to teach TN Foundational Skills and Wit & Wisdom. In the TN Foundational Skills Lessons, the students are often asked to read a story, either in small groups or with the whole class. As I observe my mentor teacher, I notice that she was modeling for the students by pointing out the more complex words, sounding out the individual letters, and combining the letters to sound out the words. Similar strategies were used in Wit & Wisdom, in which the students are asked to write about what they learned from reading a story. In these lessons, the teacher would show the students, step-by-step, how she comes up with what to write and how she sounds out the words, sound-by-sound, to figure out the spelling of a word. Aside from modeling with her actions, my mentor teacher also uses the works of other students, showing the students which elements they are expected of, such as finger spaces and neat handwriting. During my observation, I’ve noticed that students are picking up from these modelings, and, when instructed to read a story by themselves, multiple students could sound out the words and make sense of the stories on their own. Similarly, during the Wit & Wisdom lesson, when the students were instructed to write a paragraph regarding a certain invention, I can hear students saying the word they want to write and spelling out the words, letter-by-letter. This strategy of modeling is also supported by articles such as that of Fenty and Brydon (2020), who stress the importance of providing models for students to allow improvement in students' prosody skills. Having witnessed the power of modeling, I made sure to include modeling elements in my lessons, too. In my lesson plans, I would make sure to note the places where I’ll model for the students and sound out a particular word. In this way, I try to implement good teaching practices in my lessons.