One-on-One 9/29

This week the students are reading a story called The Rise of the Red Chief.  It is a cute story that the students have in their literature books.  I have enjoyed watching and observing Mrs. Roed teaching this story and the reading techniques students need to master.  One of the activities I enjoyed and hope to implement in my future classroom is to have the students make predictions about a story by the artwork that is on either the cover or a picture that goes with the story.  In the students literature book each story has "cover art" and the students can make predictions about characters, plot and story line from this artwork.  The students seem to enjoy this activity and like hearing their peers' opinons and ideas.  Mrs. Roed always encourages her students to read their writing aloud to their peers; either in small groups or to the whole class.  I like this portion of the class period because the students get practice reading aloud and this boosts their confidence with public speaking.

During the last hour of the day I got the opportunity to go in the hall and assist students who had missed class throughout the week.  I helped them get caught up with their work, and tried to keep them on task.  I was amazed at the struggle a few of the students had while reading the assigned pages.  I was amazed that they were opposed to reading 4 pages of text and that it was that big of a deal.  I had trouble encouraging them to read because I saw it as the easiest assignment ever.  I will have to learn and work on a few ways to help students want to read.

Book Club:
During book club today we wer asked to bring a quote from the first 100 pages of Hourglass.  I chose a quote that I thought represented the overall feelings of the main character, but the quote was also funny.  One of the book club members Hailey was struggling to complete her required book summary about a book she read over the summer.  Mrs. Roed asked me to help Hailey complete her summary and I gladly accompanied her to the library to begin typing.  We worked on the summary and after a bit of a struggle we completed what she thought was a fair attempt.  I later learned that Hailey often struggles with this type of assignment and that Mrs. Roed felt bad about asking me to help.  I obviously took this opportunity as a great way to learn about working one on one with students and enjoyed the chance to help Hailey do her best.
The quotes the girls chose were all interesting, and its cool to see their individual personalities coming out of their shells.  I can't wait for more opportunities at book club.