Alexandra Blake - S00152997

Part A - Rationale

Teachers can collect many different forms of assessment data to help inform their
lesson planning. These two lessons were developed through the interpretation of the
data that is represented on the class report for literacy. This data informed me of
what reading development level each student are at and guided my understanding
on what reading focus each student needs to further develop. From there, I was able
to spate the class into two separate groups. One group consisted of 21 students and
the other group consisted of just 5. The data on the report shows that these 21
students vary in abilities; however they are all at least at level E (linking and
combining information in paragraphs) or above. The students who were not at level
E yet were those 5 students. This group became my focus group as I wanted to work
one on one with these students to scaffold their learning with the aim to further
develop their understanding. This would also be a great opportunity to observe how
these students are approaching literacy lesson and why they may not be developing
at the same rate as the other students. I may want to rethink my teaching practices
with these students after analysing my observational notes.
Grouping these students into these two groups allowed me to narrow down the
reading focus areas that I wanted the students to practice in these lessons. The
group with five students were all at the same reading focus according to their data
from the report thus becoming the focus group. The reading focus was phrase and
sentence level meaning. In response to this I chose to focus on paraphrasing in the
first lesson and literal comprehension for the second lesson. Guided reading was the
instructional strategy that I decided to use to develop paraphrasing as it creates the
opportunity for the teacher to work close with the students taking control of
discussion whilst being able to prompt thinking through questions during reading
time. Iaquinta (2006) explains that the teachers role in guided reading is to ensure
that the essential elements are implemented and integrated throughout instruction;
therefore paraphrasing would be the essential element that the teacher can
implement through discussion in this instance. The second lesson for the focus
group was based on literal comprehension. Through my research on instructional
strategies, I discovered the turn on meaning comprehension strategy from The
Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (2015) to help develop literal
comprehension for this focus group. This strategy makes students aware that three
different kinds of meaning can be constructed during reading/viewing literal,

Alexandra Blake - S00152997

Part A - Rationale

inferential and personal (QCAA, 2015), therefore catering to the focus area. As this
lesson is also scaffolded by the teacher, it is suitable for the students to be exposed
to the more challenging areas that are inferential and personal meaning. Scaffolding
is an essential step for students to experience as it creates many opportunities for
learning to occur. Verenikina (2008) guarantees that scaffolding is beneficial in the
classroom as it not only helps guide and prompt the students understanding on the
topic but it also aims to gradually remove the assistance and transfer the
responsibility to the child over a period of time.
The text that I selected for the first lesson was Matilda (Dahl, 1988). I carefully chose
this text for a number of reasons. The first reason is that it has an engaging story
line. The second reason is that it is a chapter book therefore accommodating to the
reading level abilities in this class. The last reason is that there is a film based on the
text Matilda (1996), therefore helping develop the second lesson. Introducing the
film in the second lesson means that there are multimodal texts incorporated into
literacy to help develop reading and visual understanding. Having a multimodal
approach to literacy can engender a holistic literacy and learning experience that
involves listening, reading, viewing, talking and interacting with texts and with others
(Walsh, 2009).
In the lesson conclusion I purposely ensured that the students would have the
opportunity to give and receive feedback keeping in mind the success criteria that
was given to both groups at the beginning of the lesson. Hattie (2007) states that
feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement,
therefore having this strategy to finish the lesson can provide great potential for all
learners in the classroom. All of the students can gain some insight from another
persons point of view whilst also having the opportunity to practice marking work
against the success criteria, ensuring that they are doing exactly what they are
expected to be doing to be successful. Hattie (2007) also ensures that the timing of
feedback is essential. He states that feedback that is provided at a later time is
useless and irrelevant as the individual may have already progressed by the time
they received their feedback at a later time. Hence, why this feedback activity is
scheduled right after the lesson is finished.
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