Having a Time Scheduling is Important
Justine Marie M. Colico
The number of conferences and small group sessions that a teacher can manage per week is truly an individual matter. The recommendation of two to four conferences per child per week suggested by some writers may be ideal but it is almost impossible for some teachers.
If the daily time devoted to reading ranges from ninety to one hundred minutes in the first grade to forty-five to sixty in the intermediate grades, a minimum of two ten minute conferences per week per pupil would occupy all the time allotted to reading instruction, in a class of twenty five to thirty pupils. It is apparent that conferences must be less frequent than twice per week, or extremely brief, or limited to one segment of the class-for example, to the superior readers. There are some of the reasons for having recommended that individualized reading be offered at first only to the better readers. Even with this arrangement which assumes that about one third of the instructional time is devoted to this segment of the class, scheduling of the teacher’s time is a problem.
Some teachers meet this situation by making a schedule which insures that all pupils will have conferences in turn. Other teachers offer a schedule sheet on which children may write their names when they feel the need for a conference or wish to report on a book they have read. A third approach involves permitting children to ask the teacher for a conference at any time during the day that he is not otherwise engaged. As a fourth solution, some teachers conduct group conferences with pupil teams or committees. In our opinion the use of inventory and diagnostic conferences, offers a real contribution to efficiency.
Careful analysis of the skill development will be made at planned intervals by this approach. Thus the teacher will be relieved of the impossible task of using most conferences for diagnostic purposes. He will not feel presumed to have the child read orally to him each time under the mistaken illusion that this procedure is the best method of keeping his finger on the pulse of the child’s reading development.
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The author is Secondary School Teacher III at Angeles City National High
School