Entry #8 Watch the video clip of a sheltered literacy lesson. Reflect on what the teacher did to promote comprehension. What do you see the teacher do? What do you see the students do? Reflect on readings in your blog. List essential components of the sheltered lesson, comment on your observation of both teacher and student.

In this lesson, the teacher used both concrete examples and pictures to promote comprehension. She used some type of visual aid for every part of the lesson. To build students background knowledge, she used pictures from a recent field trip that the students took. She held the pictures up to help them recall the experience and to provide visual supports of the vocabulary she was using. In the next part of the lesson, she discussed various vegetable vocabulary words and allowed students to see and touch the vegetables as she introduced them. Once the students had a chance to experience the vegetables she talked about where they might get vegetables after they are picked. For this she brought in and showed shopping bags of the places they might get their vegetables. She then invited students to sing along with her about healthy foods. When the students and she were singing she held up and showed a model of each of the healthy foods, like crackers, peaches, celery, bread, potatoes, etc. After the song the teacher allowed students to respond to the song by sharing what foods they enjoy eating. Some students were able to freely articulate what foods they enjoy while others required more support. For this, the teacher put two food choices in front of the child and asked them to say which food they liked out of the two. In addition when the students commented on the foods they liked, the teacher responded with an extension type comment rather than correcting what students said. For example if they had a one word response, she would say something like “Yes, I like peanut butter too.”  Overall the teacher did a great job of sheltering the instruction and promoting comprehension through concrete objects and pictures.  The content concepts and speech used was appropriate for the students in her group. She explicitly linked concepts to the students’ backgrounds and experiences. She emphasized key vocabulary by showing examples and repeating vocabulary words several times. It was evident that the teacher planned the use of supplementary materials and made the learning meaningful. Finally, she provided more or less support for certain students to help move that particular student from one level of understanding to the next. Since this was only a short small group mini lesson, I was unable to determine the learning objective(s) and how students practice and apply the new learning. In general, it was a great example of how a variety of visual aids can be used to support student learning and comprehension of what is being taught and discussed.  I could certainly see how this would be beneficial for students learning language.