Module 3: Receptive Skills

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The reading was an excerpt from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott ( Q: Skills for Success: Reading and Writing 4, Unit 3, Reading 2, pages 72 - 78). I can identify it as an authentic text because the textbook clearly identifies it as an excerpt from a book.

The main purpose of the lesson is receptive skills development.  However the text will be later exploited in a subsequent writing lesson.  The textbook is set up so that the writing task at the end of the unit is in the same genre as the reading.  The text is also exploited for vocabulary building.  Each reading in this textbook has twelve vocabulary words highlighted.  These words are selected with the goal of building vocabulary knowledge rather than on their importance to understanding the text. 

The brief introduction to the text at the bottom of page 72 helps to guide student understanding of what to expect.  In addition, the reading fits into the larger theme of the unit, childhood influences, and discussion on this same topic was done in the previous lessons.  There is also a lead-in question specific to this reading, all of which serves to activate students’ schemata.

The genre is memoir.  This is stated on page 72, but students are not explicitly made aware of the genre’s features in today’s lesson.  (It is the subsequent lesson that will examine the features.)

There are multiple tasks accompanying the reading.  The students do not have the stamina to complete all the tasks, and so the teacher has to adapt by selecting.

For the pre-reading tasks, in the textbook the preview task is first, then a lead-in (called “Quick Write”) and then the vocabulary.  I switched the order.  I did the lead-in first, because the introduction to the general topic should proceed previewing the specific text.  I omitted the vocabulary task, because it was too much vocabulary to deal with in a pre-teach, and it would have derailed any interest generated by the lead-in.  Then, because the preview task dealt with global understanding of the whole text, I used it as a gist task instead 

In my lesson, the lead-in was successful because it generated a lot of student ideas, and the gist question was successful because it was easy for students to do and gave them confidence.

As for the reading tasks, I omitted exercise A because it was too general and did not provide guidance for the students.  I skipped exercises B and C because the vocabulary work should only come after the general meaning of the text had been dealt with.  I used activity D because it was a good way to test students’ general understanding of the text, and activity E because it required detailed comprehension of the text.  Then I did the vocabulary at the end.

The students easily completed exercise D,which they liked because it gave them confidence, but they struggled with Exercise E.  This discouraged them, but I was able to guide them to the correct answers with nudging questions.  I thought this was successful because by struggling a little, and then finding the answer in the end with scaffolding from the teacher, the students were able to increase their ability to read for detailed comprehension.