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.