Teacher

Today, we're going to learn about life cycles!!

Learning about life cycles can be a lot of fun, but it is important to be excited and motivate students to want to learn. For this reading event, I told students about all of the different plants and animals that go through a life cycle (flowers, trees, frogs, butterflies, etc.). We talked about how a cycle is like a circle. We had open discussions about each part of a life cycle (beginning, middle, end). However, at this point, I probably should have chosen a specific example instead of using multiple examples. This way, students wouldn't feel overwhelmed about all of the information.

Student

I love butterflies!

I want to learn more about frogs!

The students were excited to learn about their favorite animal. It is lucky that there are so many different areas of interest when it comes to the life cycle. There were some students who couldn't decide what they wanted to learn about. Groups were divided by interest, so some students changed their mind when they saw where their friend went. This is something that I may need to change so every student is learning about something they are truly interested in, not just where their friend goes. Another change I may need to make to groups is form them myself so students are at least close to the same reading level, this way every student in the group is comprehending what is being read.

Text

For the text, I chose multiple books at different levels for students to use in their group. Students were to either choral read or partner read within their group. One mistake I made was giving different levels of books. Some books were way to easy, while others were too difficult for lower readers. This also goes back to pairing groups. If students were paired based on approximate reading level, I would have chosen the book for them instead of them choosing. This way, it ensures each student is given a book at or close to their level.

Context

Life cycles can tend to get bogged down with a lot of information, but since this is a class of 1st graders, I kept it fairly simple. I allowed the students to choose their topic so it was something they had interest in, and they could pull from their knowledge to help them understand the life cycle.