Mini-lesson for Watson's Go to Birmingham- 1963

Erin Verona
Mini-lesson
Topic: “The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963” for teaching prosody
Grade: 4th or 5th
Time: One hour period and one 25 minute period

Introduction
The children will have already read the book “The Watson’s Go to Birmingham—1963” by Christopher Paul Curtis. After a short discussion about the likes and dislikes of the book, we will move into the mini-lesson. Since this lesson is based around fluency, the activities will be based around improving reading speed, teaching prosody and reading practice. I will read the passage with emphasis at certain parts and then write the passage on the board phrase by phrase. The passage is “Doors opened in the neighborhood and people came out and looked up in the sky but there was nothing there, not one cloud, nothing to give a clue to what the big hollow sound was, nothing but bright, hot, stupid Alabama sun” (Curtis, 182). It will be written as,
“Doors opened in the neighborhood
And people came out and looked up in the sky
But there was nothing there
Not one cloud
Nothing to give a clue to what the big hollow sound was
Nothing but bright, hot, stupid Alabama sun”
Main Events
-Teach
I will explain the activity to the students first. I will explain that they will be split into groups of 3 or 4 and decide how they will read the passage together. After they have done this, they will pick another passage to do the same thing with. They will then present as a group both their original passage reading and the new passage. It will have been explained in the directions that it is open ended as to whether they will read all together or break up the passages into individual parts. I will then do the activity myself to example. I have chosen, “I walked as slowly and as quietly as I could out of the church. Maybe if I moved quietly he wouldn’t come for me. Maybe if I walked and didn’t look back he’d leave me alone” (Curtis, 185). I chose this example because I want to be sure that they realize a passage can be more than one sentence. After asking if there are any questions, I will split the children into already chosen groups.
-Guided Practice
I will walk around to supervise and answer questions. I will be sure to ask each group what other passage they have chosen to read. I will give them approximately 20-25 minutes to figure out how they want to present. We will then as a class watch the presentations.
Assess Learning
I wanted to do this activity because it definitely teaches prosody by chunking passages into phrases. Since the students will be skimming the book quickly to find an additional passage, they will be working on reading speed. This activity also provides an opportunity to practice reading which is vital to the children’s development of fluency. Two to three days after performing this activity, we will do the assessment. I will take a chapter out of this book and split it into as many passages as there are students in the class. Each student will get one passage. Figuring that the class has their desks or chairs in a circle, they will just read from the first one to the last one. Hopefully each child will read their passage with correct phrasing and fluently. I figure this will take about 15 minutes in addition to an extra 5-10 minutes for comments and questions.