Observation of Instructional Lesson:

Grade: 3rd
Curriculum Area: Reading/Writing
What I notice

The teacher brings students to

the carpet to do a physical Venn
diagram using sticky notes. She
compares non-fiction books to
fiction books.
Before reading the non-fiction text
about monarch butterflies,
teacher asks students to make
predictions during a picture walk.
I noticed that during the read
aloud, students make a C with
their hands if they make a
connection to the story.
During the non-fiction lesson, the
teacher also reads a biography
about one of the authors they are
studying. She does a think aloud
to help students learn to make
those connections in their head
while reading.
The teacher incorporates
daybooks into each subject every
day. During this lesson, she had
the students glue their biography
handout in their daybooks.
After the lesson, the teacher has
the students break off into their
Fab 5 groups. The students
rotate daily to different reading
and writing centers. There is Read
to Self, Partner Read, Small
Group, Journal Write, etc.
During the lesson, the teacher
pulls a small group of students to
work on schema. She starts with a
picture walk of the book and asks
students to write down their
schema on their strips. She has
the students use a lint roller to roll
up their schema strips and glue
them in their daybooks.

Date: 10/17/16
Time: 10:30- 11:30
Thoughts, Questions, Connections to
Methods Classes We have talked about the use of
non-fiction texts in reading as
well as language arts. We have
talked about the different styles
of non-fiction writing in
language arts too.
Students are able to create their
own ideas based on prior
knowledge just by looking at the
pictures. This helps set a
purpose for the read aloud.
We have talked about text to
self, text to text and text to
world connections in both
reading and language arts. The
teacher has the students show
instead of share their connection
during the story so that it is not
disruptive to the other students.
We have learned in reading that
think alouds are very important
for comprehension
development. It helps the
students ask themselves these
comprehension questions when
reading on their own.
Daybooks are a big part of our
language arts course as well. I
was able to see many
similarities in the use of
daybooks.
This relates to the different
reading methods we have
discussed in our reading course.
We have learned about the
importance of schema in
reading. Students need to be
able to activate their schema
when reading text.
In our reading course, we have
talked about demonstrating

The teacher also referred back to

their metacognition thinking
stems during the lesson
- Im thinking
- Im noticing
- Im wondering
- Im seeing
- Im feeling

metacognition strategies.
Metacognition helps with selfknowledge, task- knowledge and
self-monitoring.