This
week in our pre-internship class my co-teaching partner and I led a small group
of fourth grade boys as they read aloud chapter three of their social studies
textbook. Our class is a fourth
and fifth grade combo class; therefore, our teacher asked us to work with the
fourth graders in order for her to teach the fifth graders a lesson without
distracting the fourth graders.
This made me wonder several things. Mainly, how effective are combo classrooms in which one
teacher is in charge of two separate grade levels? Why do schools use this
teaching approach?
My co-teaching partner and I instructed the fourth graders in a work area connected to the classrooms. In the beginning of the reading, the boys were a bit goofy. They were laughing while their peers were reading as well as interjecting. I think this was because they were not used to us teaching them. Maybe they were testing us? It did not take them long to settle down though. Overall, they are a great group of kids. The only other issue that we had was completing the review at the end of the chapter. The students were very loud/ rowdy for the space we were in, and I was concerned that it was disturbing the students in other classrooms. I learned from this small experience that I need to work on my class management skills without being too harsh on the students. There is no problem with the students talking and working together in my opinion as long as the work is being done. This made me wonder how you establish yourself as a warm demander with your students? What is the appropriate level of off-topic conversation/ “roudiness” before you say something to your students? How do you tell your students to behave in a way that gets your message across while also maintaining the students level of respect for you?
My co-teaching partner and I instructed the fourth graders in a work area connected to the classrooms. In the beginning of the reading, the boys were a bit goofy. They were laughing while their peers were reading as well as interjecting. I think this was because they were not used to us teaching them. Maybe they were testing us? It did not take them long to settle down though. Overall, they are a great group of kids. The only other issue that we had was completing the review at the end of the chapter. The students were very loud/ rowdy for the space we were in, and I was concerned that it was disturbing the students in other classrooms. I learned from this small experience that I need to work on my class management skills without being too harsh on the students. There is no problem with the students talking and working together in my opinion as long as the work is being done. This made me wonder how you establish yourself as a warm demander with your students? What is the appropriate level of off-topic conversation/ “roudiness” before you say something to your students? How do you tell your students to behave in a way that gets your message across while also maintaining the students level of respect for you?
In
addition to leading this small group, we also co-taught our second lesson. Instead of a reading lesson however, it
was a fifth grade math lesson. The
lesson was on explaining the relationship of the x and y axis on line
graphs. The line graphs were
titled and labeled, but there were no scales (numbers). The students had to explain what was
happening in the graphs based on what they saw. Overall the lesson went well. It was another successful week in the classroom.
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