A Day in the Life of a Second Grade Teacher
September 02, 2009
Second-grade teacher Becky Hicks tailors her daily lesson plans with the ultimate goal of teaching students not just the facts, but also the importance of how to learn on their own. "One of the major points is to teach them to be independent students," she says. "Of course, all the academics are incredibly important, but if they go to third grade and don't know how to do their work on their own or read the directions and follow the simple tasks for where the paper goes, they are going to struggle," she says.
Hicks, who teaches public school at Blanchard Elementary School in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, starts the school day right away with an exercise that helps her students cultivate that independence. Each morning when her students walk into the classroom, there is a sheet of paper on their desks and instructions written on the board for them to follow. "The first few weeks, I read the board with them, and then I start showing them the most important things, and by the time November rolls around, they are coming in in the morning, and putting away their things, and starting on the paper all on their own."
Melanie Whitener, a literary consultant for the Southeast Regional Professional Development Center at Southeast Missouri State University, says this type of daily exercise promotes lessons that are important to second graders' development. "Establish routines and procedures first, have a "jobs chart" so kids have some ownership in their classroom community," she says, "and provide a gradual release of responsibility when leading kids to independence."
During the day, Hicks' students steadily weave this combination of teacher-guided study and independent action into all of their lessons. During language time, students take turns teaching each other the lessons for the day on the board, and during science hour they participate in supervised activities.
For the last lesson of the day, the children engage in independent reading, and she allows them decide when they are ready to take computer quizzes on the books they are reading.
"If they finish the book, they get to go to the computer and take a test on the book," she says. "And our goal is they can take the quiz if they feel they are ready to get 80 percent or better."
By letting the children decide what book to read, how many times to read it, and when to take the quiz, Hicks is guiding them through the process of independent learning. But second graders are still in the beginning stages of this, and Hicks' direction is still very important.
Hicks advises her students to read through the short books three times before taking the tests, but one student kept insisting on taking the test after reading a book only once or twice. When he would take the test afterward, he would always score a 60 percent. "Finally I sat him down, and I made him read it back to me three times," Hicks says. "He got a 100 percent."
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