Help me please? Training teacher, out of my depth

[faithinthesound]

I'm trying so hard, and nothing is gelling. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm supposed to be teaching a lesson on reading tomorrow and I'm sitting here almost in tears because I just don't seem to be able to do it.

I have the associate teacher's planning for the unit but I'm supposed to write the actual lesson. I have the book the kids are supposed to be reading with me. I just don't know where to start.

I feel like I can't ask for any more help from them than I already have because I'm just going to sound like a moron... But I don't know what to do with these kids and I'm starting to panic.

It's my first placement and I so badly want to be good at this. I just don't know where to start.

Please help me?

Primary or secondary? Book? Year group?

Primary, and the book is nonfiction, a series of articles/pieces about the environment.

My kids are Y5/6, fairly proficient readers, but they're At Standard, as opposed to Above Standard.

And what's the goal of the lesson? What do you want them to learn / improve?

Do some retrieval of information type questions - teach them skimming and scanning skills so they look for key words to help find the answer question quickly and efficiently.

Look at the text features. How is it laid out and why?

You're a trainee in your first placement - you're allowed to ask for more help if you need it, it's the way to learn!

However, as above:

-What do you want the children to learn from the lesson, what skill are you teaching or reinforcing?

Paraphrasing and summarising information from the text, and asking relevant and focused questions to clarify understanding.

Actually, there's another achievement objective that fits kind of perfectly with an article in here - predict text events using previous knowledge and details in the text/use evidence in text to verify predictions

When teaching summarising, I find that using Who, Why, What, Where, How questions help.
Who are they talking about/wrote it?
Why is this the most important piece of information?
What is the main idea?
Etc etc.

Start with the features of the book - quick review of contents page, index, glossary etc.

Focus on a section of the book instead of the whole thing and wrote some specific questions you want them to answer.

Look up Bloom's taxonomy, there's a useful sheet full of questions and you want to use the higher level (mostly). I.e instead of asking 'what is the most important point?' ask 'why is this more important than that?'

Consider whether you want the kids to do round robin reading or as a group, usually a mixture of both.

Model the skull first and be explicit with them about what you want them to do - i.e print lo and success criteria and go through it first.

PM me and I can reply after school. And please don't be afraid to check ideas/all for help. It's your first placement and people will expect you to :)