Working one on one with students

      In my fieldwork I've had the opportunity to work one on one with students several times.  As I've helped out in Mrs. "A's" fourth grade class I've been able to circle the room and help students individually.  This week when I helped, the students were working on spelling.  They were given a list of their spelling words with a worksheet.  The worksheet had questions such as "Soup is to lunch as _____ is to breakfast".  The response needed was one of the spelling words which happened to be Oatmeal.    Several students struggled with knowing which words went with the questions.

 

     One student was really struggling so I stayed to help as much as I could without giving him the answers.  I would ask him what the words in the sentence/question meant and then asked him if he was looking for a word that had the same meaning or the opposite meaning.  Then I directed him to look at his spelling words to see which one fit the best. 

     He struggled with the spelling word Boast.  He didn't understand what it meant.  I could see how the constructivism learning theory came into play.  I tried to get him to figure out what word he was looking for based on his prior knowledge.  He was to match the word brag to his spelling word boast.  I asked him what brag meant and then directed him to find the best answer.  I could see that some students had a better understanding of some words than others.  It's interesting to see the differences in their learning styles and levels of understanding.

Developmental Differences in Children

As I've started my field work for my Introduction to Education class, I have noticed some developmental differences in the children I've come into contact with.  I have been working with 1st graders and helping their teacher Mrs. "N".  I've been helping to assess how well they do one to one counting.  Some children are very confident about their counting while others get the "deer in the headlights" look. 

The counters I used are small, red hippo's in a basket.  I've been intrigued to see the different ways the children count them.  Some take a handful and count from that, others take one at a time out of the basket.  Some kids put the counted hippo's in a big pile, others line them up.  Even the way the hippo's are lined up are different.  Some face them forward, some face them sideways.  One child even lined them up in groups of ten.

How high the children counted varied drastically.  I noticed that many used prior knowledge of numbers to help them count the higher numbers.  They knew that 2 comes after 1 and they used this knowledge to conclude that  22 comes after 21 or that 42 came after 41.  They were using Constructivism to achieve this.  Other children showed signs of Behaviorism.  They looked to me for my response to their counting.  They seemed to need my approval or a reward of some sort to help validate what they were doing before they could continue on.  I'm excited to see what other things I observe as I continue on this exciting journey.