Tutoring Lesson 3

Objective:

Good readers can find the main idea and key details of a story to help them better comprehend what they are reading.  

Procedures:

Opening and purpose: Today we are going to read a short story and work on finding the key details and main idea. It is important for us to know the most important parts of a story because it helps us better understand what we are reading.

Activity 1: Complete the Statue of Liberty main idea worksheet with help Activity 2: Read the short story called “Mousie” and fill out the graphic organizer that asks for the main idea and key details. Activity 3: Blind word sort using the words from the last closed word sort Activity 4: If there is time, student will read and I will ask her to find the key details and main idea of the section she reads.

Assessment: I will use both the Statue of Liberty worksheet and the graphic organizer to assess.

Closure: Thank you for working with me today. Remember that finding the main idea and key details can help you comprehend what you are reading. 

Reflection on Student:

Margaret made some incredible gains with her spelling during this lesson! We did a blind word sort first with the same words she had been working with last week. I gave her the categories that the words would go into and then read her the words and asked her to spell them into the correct categories. I was surprised to see her problem solve as she would realize that the way she spelled certain words didn’t look right so she tried them with different patterns until they did look right. She still got some words wrong but I am extremely proud of her for noticing the patterns and realizing that they could help make spelling easier. The other thing we worked on was using key details to determine main idea. The first activity was a sheet where she was first given the main idea and she had to decide which key details went with the main idea then she was given the main idea and had to come up with her own key details. She did fabulous with this activity and really had a good concept of the key details. For the second activity we read a short story together and then went back through together and found what we thought was most important (the key details). She did a great job with this as well. However, when I asked her to use the details to come up with the main idea, she had absolutely no idea what to say. I basically had to feed her the concepts and she put them all together for the main idea. I know that main idea is so broad that it can be tricky to find. I will just keep practicing with her and hopefully the more she practices the better she will get at it.

Reflection on Self:

            

           I really think I did a better job with time management for this lesson. I felt like I gave Margaret enough time for each activity and some reflection time and also got through everything I wanted to get done. I really liked the discussion Margaret and I had today about finding the key details and main idea and I felt accomplished when she was able to tell me what she learned and why we did what we did at the end of the lesson. I have to really work at not getting frustrated with myself for Margaret not performing well on some of the activities I have her do. Obviously I know she is a struggling reader but it is hard to realize that when I know she is so close to achieving what I am asking her to do. I will really try to work on my patience with myself because I know that it takes time and my time with her is minimal. My main goal should always be to just give her practice because the more exposure and experience she gets with what she struggles with, the better she will get.