Day 3: Small Group Lessons

By Nadine Hamideh
Thursday February 13, 2020

Today was a very busy day due to it being a half day. I was able to give out my reading interest survey to the students. And my CT also informed me about the students that parents have approved in terms of taking photos as she told me to put that in my parent letter because it would be beneficial to know which students I am allowed to take photos of for educational purposes. After that my CT then told me that she wanted me to get an in-depth  experience  in working with small groups so she told me to work with 6 different small groups, 2 from each of the levels low, average and high. I spend majority of the day working in those small groups. I taught a scholastic magazine story about Bears to the students in small groups. They were to read the magazine and pay attention to key details as they were to write and draw some stuff from the magazine that they remembered from the reading. The groups I worked with were divided in three sections. There was the low group, where I had to read the story to them and the students just had to listen and draw a picture after. Then there was the average group where they had to read with me as a group and then draw as well as write just three things they have learned from the reading. The last group I worked with was the high group, in which they had to read on their own, draw a picture and write about 4-5 full sentences about what they remember from the reading. However, by just working  in these different small group levels of students I noticed a huge difference in terms of their behavior as the students in the high group were extremely respectful and well behaved, but in the low and average levels the students were just a big rowdy. My CT also told me that the high group would be extremely easy to teach and go through the small group lesson with compared to the lower level of students. Overall it was a great experience to work with the different levels and it benefited me in terms of knowing what to expect when it comes time for me to teach my actual small group lesson.