A small school is a school with a small number of students, and therefore it organizes classes of children of different ages, with a small number of students. In such a school, one teacher works with several classes at the same time. Small schools are most often primary, but can be incomplete secondary and secondary. Usually, such schools are opened in rural areas. In our country, there are several thousand small schools. Such a school is similar in its way of life to a large family – each student is well known and helped.
If the school is primary, then only one or two teachers may work there, so they have many responsibilities in addition to purely teaching. Working in a small school, a teacher has to create and maintain an atmosphere of rich spiritual life around him. Otherwise, as V.A. Sukhomlinsky noted, it is easy to sink and turn your remote settlement into a backwater. Remember that a teacher remains a teacher as long as he himself is a student.
The issue of class formation is approached creatively, based on specific conditions. If there are 2 teachers in a school, then it is possible to combine students from grades 1 and 3 or grades 2 and 4. When drawing up a schedule, lessons are usually planned for one subject at a time, which allows in some cases to conduct mathematics lessons on one or similar topics. In this case, it is easier for the teacher to switch his attention when moving from one class to another. In addition, conditions are created for organizing joint work of children from all classes. In other cases, it is possible to combine lessons in different classes: reading and Russian language; writing and natural history. It is recommended to combine mathematics with drawing.
Organizing a lesson in a small school requires the teacher to be able to quickly and frequently switch to working with different classes, and distribute their attention and time.
The main type of lesson is combined, in the structure of which in most cases there is a fairly significant amount of independent work in the form of various exercises and work with a book. The peculiarity of this independent work is that it is performed by students without the participation of the teacher or with his/her minimal participation. During the lesson, students can make several transitions from work with the teacher to independent work and back.
It is important to properly organize the beginning of the lesson so that all classes can start working immediately.
