LI Day 4

I really enjoy being able to work with students on different ends of the spectrum. Sometimes, I take children who are way below the class average out to the hallway and work with them. And sometimes, I take the children who are way above the class average out to the hallway and work with them. Today I was with the advanced students. I was working with three students and we were reading an advanced story. We all took turns reading aloud and I would ask questions and promt them to discuss along the way. At the end there was a worksheet that dealt with feelings (holistic learning?!) that they worked on individually. One thing I noticed about these three advanced student is that they knew they were advanced. Since they were advanced, they thought that they could fool around a little bit. I often had to correct their behavior and tell them to listen or pay attention or follow along. They spent a lot of time just talking to each other instead of listening to me as the other students did.

Mrs.Hausmann discussed with me the difficulty with having so many students at different levels. She said she could count on one hand the number of students who are at the average 1st grade level. I am taking notes in my mind of the different ways she teaches all the students. She uses the "centers" to work with each level of students individually, letting the others lead their own learning for part of the day. She also has many, many volunteers in the classroom who are taking students out into the hallway to work on specific skills with them. I do not think that she would be as successful if she didn't have the volunteers helping her all of the time. I am worried that the school I end up teaching at won't have a volunteer group, high school or college coming in to help in my classroom.