My Urban Travelogue...Posting for February 8th

This week has been a crazy one for me! I just started another small group at school, this time 2nd grade reading. Now I have a total of 7 groups (3rd, 4th, and 5th grades in math as well as 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades in reading). My 2nd grade group is quite diverse! Some of my students are perfectly content with sitting and listening to me read and answering questions when we are done. Others are much more interested in chatting with a friend than reading and answering questions. Also, I have one little girl who is off in la la land most of the time. When she does follow along, she is not able to retell the story accurately very well if at all. My students are of a wide variety of ethnicities. From what I have done so far, I can tell that the students like to be actively engaged when reading, discussing, or working on phonics skills. That is when they are the most well behaved.

I can take my experience this week and try to apply it next week by planning a wider variety of activities that are more engaging than just reading and discussion (since during discussion about half the group checks out for their own discussion). I think I will also work on making group consistent so students know what to expect. Perhaps that will help with their engagement with the whole group.

I’d like to know more about how I can help my students stay on task. Even if we are doing something engaging and even fun, some students tend to get a little more crazy than I would like in group. I would like to know more about keeping them focused and on task while still having fun.

I recently observed one of the third grade classes at my school to see how the third graders I have behave/perform in class. The teacher gave instruction time in front of the class with the student on the floor, much like a big kid version of circle time. This helped her to keep track of students as well as keeping them more focused. If I were teaching this class, I would probably give instruction in a very similar way. I like that all of the students seemed to stay focused on the floor. They were close to the teacher, which seemed a bit motivating to them. The only thing I would change is having a white board that is closer to their level. If you are going to have students sitting on the floor, it seems better to have the board closer to their level rather than having them strain their necks to look up high at the board.