I was able to visit the second grade class of Mrs. H a few days ago during a literacy block. I decided to come during this time because Mrs. H has a very unique way of doing stations. Each student is assigned to a group at the beginning of the year. During literacy block groups are assigned to one station they stay at for the entire 35 minutes. The groups each have an index card with the students’ names on them and next to the names are small colored clips. Each clip indicates the job that the student has that week. Jobs included “discussion leader”, “grader”, and “materials distributor”. During the literacy block time students knew exactly what their jobs were and where they were supposed to go. Because of all the modeling and practice the students had with this system, the whole class ran like clockwork. Everyone was engaged the whole time and there were no behavior issues. Mrs. H ran a guided reading group at the back table. She was keeping a running record of the students’ at her table’s reading. She would tell the students how many words they read per minute and the kids were really excited about getting a higher WPM score. She also gave a student a suggestion to read with more expression, which all the subsequent readers took to heart and practiced as well.
It was exciting to see the classroom work so smoothly and seamlessly. Mrs. H has done an extremely effective job at setting procedures in her classroom that allow her to focus on small group instruction. The procedures also allow her students to take responsibility and feel like classroom leaders. I saw students doing their jobs with pride and excitement. I hope to enact simpler, but similar procedures in my kindergarten classroom to allow for small group instruction that happens more often and without losing out on learning opportunities.
Teacher's Heart 