Gale_TP#8

Gale Workman

TP#8

Sept. 11, 2014, noon

Hecht House

Jianwei and Wiwik said they enjoyed our reading lesson today. I selected a short story from Time magazine. The story was about a baby born on the roadside in the aftermath of a typhoon that devastated a town in the Phillipines. The story was illustrated by many amazing photos and captions.

I distributed photocopies of the story to Jianwei and Wiwik. I shared the magazine with them so they could see in detail the color photos. We began the lesson by reading/reviewing the photos, captions, title, subtitles. I explained how pre-reading in this way allows the reader to think ahead about what she will read. Pre-reading enhances comprehension and speed of reading.

I read the story aloud; students followed along with their photocopies. I was ready to discuss the main idea of the story (to assess the students' listening skills), but Wiwik was sobbing. The story had moved her mightily.

When she tried to explain why she was moved ... I realized she was feeling empathy. She has three grown children and, many years ago, survived a 9-point earthquake in Indonesia. She told us the story in appropriate detail -- I helped when she was searching for a word or struggling with pronunciation. That led to a discussion among the three of us about natural disasters. Wiwik’s empathy was a teachable serendipity.

I asked the students to read the story again -- independently -- and write one sentence that summarized the main idea of the story. They read their sentences aloud, and we studied how their sentences were similar to the title, subtitles and captions. It reinforced how pre-reading can be valuable for predicting content.

The students read/scanned the story a third time to identify vocabulary words they wanted to learn: ravaged, prevailed, overshadowing, devastated, despair, triumphed. Jianwei looked up some definitions (antonyms/synonyms) on her smartphone. We discussed each word, with me defining, demonstrating and speaking example sentences. Wiwik took notes and asked probing questions to clarify.

We also had a good vocab discussion about the terms empathy and sympathy. The student were quite interested in these terms.