Yesterday at 11 I popped in on Felicia for her reading class which I had missed a week earlier. She welcomed me in the class. Surprisingly there were only four students present (7th week syndrome I suppose). I did a brief intro and then Felicia took control to begin the lesson.
They had begun reading "White Fang" in a previous class session. She started this lesson by asking some comprehension questions about the reading they had covered thus far. She called on students who were not volunteering to get everyone to participate. Then she asked a few questions for "predicting" the upcoming chapter. We were each asked to make a prediction about what it may be about. Then she gave us a few minutes to read the chapter. After reading the next three, I was worried that all we would be doing for the remainder of the class was reading silently, which I felt wouldn't be productive for any of us. About a minute after that fear manifested, she asked if everyone was finished reading. She gave the others about a minute longer to finish up. It was to my understanding that this was supposed to be an extensive reading for them, so I was surprised by the time that it took them to finish the reading.
After we read silently, she read the chapter aloud so that we could read along. She followed her reading with some comprehension questions.She also explained how some of the words were used and why they were used the way they were.
We used to last few minutes to begin a lesson on inferences from the workbook. In this lesson, the students are given a couple sentences and are asked to choose what they can infer from what they were given. I think this lesson could be very helpful.
Overall, Felicia's class was a good intro to teaching reading. I like how she gave them time to read silently, and then she read the same section out loud so they could get a better understanding of pace and pronunciation. I think this also helps with comprehension through repetition and as she explained, "it helps them to grasp the story better when they hear a native speaker read."
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