Struggle City

In my classroom it has been kind of difficult to see how our teacher teaches really anything since she has been out of the classroom all but two weeks. I have seen some of the ways she teaches comprehension but I have never seen her actually conduct or teach it to the students.

One of the methods she uses for comprehension is through monthly book reports. The students get to pick a book that is at their reading level or above and they have to have a one on one conference with her about the main elements of the book, plot, setting, characters, ect and anything else that interests them about the book. This activity is really hit or miss with my class either the students really enjoy doing the book reports or they do not even attempt to read a book for their reports. For the students who do read their books this is a good tool for building comprehension because it has the student recall specific points from the book.

Our substitute teacher has been teaching lessons on how to go about making flow charts that follow the progression of whatever story they happen to be reading for that week. This helps the students focus the ideas of the story and it still kind of shocks me how much students can struggle finding out the meaning of a story.

I would say that my students are mostly authors and left fielders. The majority of my classroom does not get out of a story its intended meaning rather they try to apply one or two of the story lines to their life. We have one student that if he see’s any type of sports ball he will only talk about basketball and how he wants to be a basketball player for the rest of class.