Reflection number two- Lesson Critique

The lesson “Ask the Author” by Lori Oczkus is a very interactive lesson that challenges students on a variety of levels.  Oczkus has her students read a text,  generate questions for the author, and then conduct a fake interview with the author. The lesson’s overall goal is to have students interact with the text in an authentic way. By requiring a higher level task such as generating questions for the author, students must interact with the text in a way that forces them to go deeper than just understanding. This is a lesson that does not allow for passive participation. Every student must read and generate questions and speak. These are powerful skills that match many common core standards including participating in collaborative conversations with peers (CC.1.5.2.A).  What I find most powerful about this lesson is how Oczkus scaffolds the lesson so that students eventually end working independently. This follows right along with the “I do, we do, you do” model of teaching that I try to practice everyday.  She starts by modeling her own thought processes while reading (Prompt: “I am wondering why the author selected this title”) and then moves them to a collaborative process of thinking with their peers (Prompts 2 and 3: “Why did you decide…” and “How did you decide…”).  She is scaffolding the lesson in a way that the students will eventually pay attention to their own questions as the read and seek the answers to the prompts on their own.  I think these prompts and especially the modeling are an extremely effective way of scaffolding the lesson so that students can grow and complete the lesson independently.  This lesson is a fantastic lesson because it allows the students to think deeply about what they are reading and challenge themselves. Each group of students will provide different questions based on their background and background knowledge. This helps provide a teachable moment in really showing students that when you read, everyone has questions and being an effective reader means asking these questions as well as answering them.  As a middle school/high school teacher, this is a skill that I focus on immensely. As texts get more difficult, students need to learn how to ask questions of the text, and how to find the answers within the text.