We had our second week with our second graders; and I don't feel that I know much more about him that in the first week. He is eager to please, has a great vocabulary and a slight stutter; and he REALLY likes the book Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Bogan Logan is her name.
"My" student only wanted to read one book; the same book two weeks in a row. He knows it, he loves it, he knows he is GOOD at it. So I told him that it would really help me with my schoolwork for him to read me something else and he chose a book about Fire and Tornados; non-fiction. I was nervous, but he did great. He read particular instead of peculiar and did not know the word furnace; when we talked about what that was he said his family called it a heater. So does mine.
He had no problems with anything that I could hook with a phonics lesson and my erstwhile instructor suggested that we work on his oral reading, and his comprehension through that.
I used to sing that SONG with my parents before there was a book...
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher I try to remember that our goal is to assess our students' skills and interests and to design instruction to help them move forward. Sometimes there is no problem, no deficit. This is OK. We still figure out how to move them forward. In this way, students labeled gifted are sometimes more challenging to teach than those identified as struggling. The former may just zone out and drift along if not challenged, which is too bad.