Peck Reading Lesson Overview #1

Reading Lesson Overview
             For this lesson, I decided to focus on Visual Imagery and its strategy instruction as explained in the Stahl article. During my lesson I will read a passage of Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen. I will ask the students to close their eyes while I read the passage and express to the students to create a picture in their mind of what I'm reading. After I have read through the passage once, I will read through the passages again,  allowing the students to follow along. After the reading, the students will be asked to illustrate the pictures that were created while I was reading or when they were following along reading. When the students are finished illustrating their pictures I will have each student talk about their pictures, what they drew, why they drew it, and where the information came from. I want to show the students that by actively engaging with the texts, in ways such as creating mental pictures,  it helps them comprehend and make meaning out of the text better.
             I have choose two focus students that both struggle with comprehension techniques. One of these students we'll call him John, is a pretty average student, he isn't necessarily the top student of the class but he would fall in the middle range of learners. From looking at his previous work, and working with him in class, this student has shown me he sometime's loses focus during reading, which in turn hinders his ability to comprehend the text as whole. It seems as if he trails off and loses focus quite often when it comes to reading. I have also noticed that this student really enjoys drawing. He is always doodling and checking out books from the library about "How to Draw:_______". I think he is a good focus student for this lesson because it will not only improve and add a strategy to his comprehension techniques, but it also includes and activity with drawing that he will enjoy.
  Randy the second focus student for this mini lesson would fall under a lower level learner. He has a really hard time paying attention to text, and making meaning out of text. I think the majority of this comes from how much time Randy has to take decoding sentences and words. The fact that I am reading the text out-loud will take this weakness out of the equation, and I can focus on teaching the strategy of visualization using visual imagery. I'm hoping that  this mini lesson will at least help him when it comes to making meaning out of passages he hears, so that once he becomes stronger at reading, he can use this technique himself.