Today I had the privileged opportunity to observe Mrs. Verba who is the Reading Specialist at Hillview Elementary School. Although I did not observe her working one-on-one with a particular student, I was able to watch her interact with a group of fourth graders as part of her once a week team-teaching lesson. Generally, this team teaching is part of the tier one intervention that she provides for all students. Many of the students who she works with are included within these groups, but many of the students who she does not work with on a regular basis are included as well.

 Generally, Mrs. Verba travels down to the regular classroom once a week and facilitates various reading center activities. In these activities she reinforces reading skills and techniques that are already used in the classroom or specific strategies that students are struggling with. This allows Mrs. Verba to personally know all of the fourth grade students. When she is not participating in the team-teaching activities, Mrs. Verba is responsible for all Tier 1 students who she works with in small groups 5 days a week. These students may bring specific projects that they were assigned in class, vocabulary words or even homework; Mrs. Verba provides scaffolding techniques for them during this small group time.

Today, the group I observed was listening to a short story entitled “Henry and the Bully.” Mrs. Verba first asked the students to make predictions of the story based on the title. The students came up with a small list of predictions: Henry gets bullied, the big one is the bully, and the bully is mean and powerful and touch. The students then listened to an audio recording of the story and were instructed to read along with the recording using their highlighters as tracking devices. The teacher stopped at the end of each small section to review comprehension questions with the students. At the end of the story the students were instructed to answer the questions, find them in the story to prove that they found it and highlight it.

1. Identify summary
2. Use context clues
3. Chronological order
4. Plot-which explains the climax
5. Distinguish between fault and opinion
6. How is the author trying to make you feel?
7. Which of the choices is Henry most likely to make the day?

The second story read to a separate group of students was entitled “Best Friends.” Again, she asked the students to make prediction of the title and the story. The questions at the end addressed specific reading skills: main idea, vocabulary, predict outcomes, identify facts/details, and draw conclusions. These questions were put into a multiple choice format.

One of the students seemed to have a hard time tracking the story and highlighting the answers correctly. Mrs. Verba addressed this quickly and individually helped this student until she was on track with the rest of the group. After everyone had completed the multiple choice questions and peer read the story, the students went back into a big group to go over the answers with the teacher.