Week 6 Assignment #1 Reading Response

It is clear that Mr. Hossack knew the student's levels and limitations in order to know how much text he gave the students.  He definitely is a very good teacher,  he has realized that in order to differentiate, he does not have to give the class three or four different texts, but how much text he gives the students to analyze.  This is also a great technique because students can get overwhelmed when they see too much writing, and they can immediately develop a negative attitude, specially if they have a low reading level. The teacher utilizes multiple entry points: reading the text independently, annotating the text, discussing in pairs, also as a whole class and gallery walk. Mr. Hossack has a great attitude, he is knowledgeable and his objectives are clear.  I felt that I would have loved to be in his class, because he presents his lesson clearly, calmly, and I feel that in his class the students really want to learn.


Mr. Hossack first focused on the objective of the lesson, to really help the students identify what they were going to do.  He had the students first read the text to get used to the flow of the text - the students do this individually.  It is important to note, that he has been doing a lot of scaffolding throughout the year, to finally get to the point, where he doesn't have to give the students much input when they are reading.  After the first reading, the kids annotate the text to identify their initial sense of what the text is mostly about.  It is obvious that he has been teaching them, to handle a paragraph at a time, instead of taking the entire text in. Once they've annotated, they move on to go deeper, thinking about specific details in the text that gives them clues and reveals to them what the main idea of the text is.  The students get back together as a class to discuss this.  Mr. Hossack then allows them to do a gallery walk, so that they go around on previously identified details so that the kids read those details from the text and make a case on why they are important and connect them to the main idea.  Lastly, the class shares the connections they made.

There are several informal assessments throughout the lesson.  When the students read the objective, Mr. Hossack is assessing their vocabulary.  After the students annotate and have read the text, they summarize, write down what the main idea is.  When they share their conclusions, he is checking for their understanding.  After the gallery walk, he is assessing how they made connections with key details, and overall he is evaluating their understanding of what main idea is.