Dec 23

So, very last reflections on an amazing experience. The last day was bittersweet for me. One student brought me a little present in a gift bag, an ornament plus a small candle! Our favorite juvenile delinquent who has to be walked through the hallways by an adult sang a little song to "Deck the Halls" that went something like "Dr. Leah has to walk me to class, Fa La La..." I handed out business cards (they were very impressed!) and a flier to our local community Christmas dinner in case they wanted to attend. I got a hug from the special ed teacher (and a gift!).

Overall, though, what did I learn? I learned about the difficulties of taking one-point-in-time assessments and making sense of those without really "knowing" the students. I learned about the issues, positives and negatives, of working with paraprofessionals, particularly those who have been in the field a long time. I watched a special-general education pair work together, and reflected on that within the context of what we know about team-teaching. I was able to see how curriculum and instruction can work within an overarching system, or how teachers plan within the context of other general education classes. I was able to see the growth and development of a new program, and how that played out with personalities involved. Overall, I the experience was an unparalleled opportunity to look at what we discuss in theory, in practice. I was so very lucky to be given the gift of a genuine involvement with children, their teachers, and their community.

Dec 17

Yesterday was THE DAY. I decided to give advice to the principal. Amazing how this Ph.D. gives me license to do that, despite my "youth" and lack of experience. So I did it. I took some notes with me, and she wanted a copy. And she listened. My advice was: (1) set some large goals, not too many; I suggested for this group writing as #1 and either fluency or comprehension as #2; (2) get some assistance -- e.g. from the school psychologist-- doing some assessment/pretesting; when we did it we were on target for some and not so much for others; (3) set short-term goals, and figure out how to meet those with instructional practices, i.e. amount of time spent on each, an instructional plan that adds up to what they want to achieve, such as starting with sentence structure and moving up toward paragraphs and essay structure; and (4) pay attention to the "team", make sure they're all on the same page with goals and roles.

Perhaps I did make a difference, and perhaps it was right there in the principal's office.

Dec 15

It struck me today how writing seems to make a difference. Our students who write seem to pass these tests, even if their writing quality leaves a bit to be desired. Others whose "essay" consists of three sentences fail every single time. A quality, build-on-it writing program is a necessity. We know writing is important, and we do plenty of writing, but I don't think we take the time to sit down and look at what each student actually needs in order to improve. By this point so many children have terrible attitudes about writing. I try to reinforce students who are writing, but they really aren't rewarded for it at all, and motivation is a huge issue.

Dec 14

This week we're "preparing" for the final. The two teachers didn't agree about what to put on the final, but unfortunately it's not any of the pretests we gave them. I think it's a comprehension test. I'd like to see fluency comparisons. Not that we did such a great job collecting data upfront, but it is very important to be able to see the same data at the beginning and end of the term. I'd also be interested to see how much time was spent at each "activity" (grammar, comprehension, fluency) so we could take a look at what seemed to make a difference.

Dec 10

Whew, was I sweating today! When I came in the teachers and parapros were discussing "those people" who "come in and think they have all the answers" despite lack of experience / not being in the trenches. I don't think they ever considered I was one of "those people." I felt like I should say something, but I didn't. Something like, apologizing for "those people," saying not all of "us" are like that, I don't know. I often miss these opportunities, but at least they don't see me that way.

It is incidents like the several they brought up that creates such a tension. And both sides are to blame. They were even talking about district-led inservices, whereas I usually feel that this tension is reserved for us profs in our "ivory tower." We should really discuss this in graduate education. A very real issue that needs to be disrupted for the good of all involved.

Dec 3

Today we watched what was to me a quite moving video in tribute to the four victims of the Birmingham Church bombing in 1963, the one that was mentioned in the book we're reading. As I was watching I was wondering whether the video makes any impression at all on these particular students, who are now a couple generations removed and who have no knowledge of any of these issues. As I wasn't born until 1974, I myself feel somewhat removed, and I can see it when I look at the faces of the paraprofessionals who remember those times. The video interviews the girls' parents and other relatives, and I would say it was probably made in the '80s. It seemed a bit old to me. What can we do to make this more realistic for children, esp perhaps those in rural, isolated all-white settings such as this? Just yesterday I confiscated something on which a student had fun writing KKK, Nazi symbols, n-word, etc. Does he know what that means? Do I? Can a video change that? What would change that? A visit to a museum? More graphic photos? A curriculum? We need to figure out how we can really teach history. As they say, those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Dec 2

Well, without a doubt, today was THE day. I forgot who I was until I was halfway home. Today I became "the teacher," with both teachers out, plus we were down a para. I learned so much today, and remembered what it's like to be "the one." I certainly felt for those in a substitute position even more than usual; at least I already knew the children and was there every day!

So what did I do that was special, you ask? I pulled out all the sped techniques. I was very direct about getting attention, explaining in advance what we were to be doing and how, I had my usual agenda on the board, used positive reinforcement. The main thing is that my eyes were everywhere instead of just on my group. I also trod very carefully around the substitute, who was of course officially responsible for the class. Things would have gone differently behaviorally without her there. A couple of students really need to be switched around, and a couple needed consequences, but I did not want to overstep my bounds. One of the issues is that there has not been a consistent behavior management plan in the past; it always seems to be worth putting one in place so students know what to expect every day. Expectations are the same, rules are the same, how the consequences are meted out are the same, period.

I loved today. Just the same though, wouldn't mind if a teacher showed up tomorrow!

Dec 1

I've been noticing distractors lately, and whether they're actually helpful or harmful. The sped teacher I'm working with dislikes tapping, rocking, anything like that, and mentions it to students when they do it. I tend to allow them if it's not too distracting to others. At what point are students using it to focus versus using them to distract themselves? It's tough to judge. With these students you have several of them going at it at once, which does get to be a bit challenging for an instructor. I'm wondering whether pencil-tapping would be such a big deal if we hadn't made it into one and now everyone does it. What if we gave out koosh balls etc.?

Nov 30

I was reading the epilogue of "Watsons Go To Birmingham - 1963" with a small group. Unfortunately the reading level jumps from something they can handle to something way out of their league -- new vocab, long sentences, and it's history. It's the history of the Civil Rights Movement, written way over the students' heads. So we really had to study each sentence and discuss. Meanwhile, whose group went way over time? I just love history. But if this book wants to make an impact, which it clearly does, something has to be done about the Epilogue, Newbery Award or no Newbery award. It's not so difficult to think about students' reading levels when preparing text, but so much text is so far above so many students' heads.

Nov 24

Today was such a rewarding day. Even though I was assigned four students, none of whom I would characterize as really engaged with the material usually, all four were just wowed by the chapter we read. We ended in a place in which you're not sure whether one character lives or dies. They were all arguing with eachother about what they thought happened and begged to read on after they were supposed to go back to class! It was so rewarding for a teacher, I started thinking about how we can harness and use this kind of energy. One of the quietest students actually asked me to read aloud to them from the next chapter when we got back to class and found that not all the other groups had finished. It was amazing to see them talking with such animation about school work!

Nov 19

The more we get into the novel, the more I like this kind of "repeated readings." The students really ARE reading, and nobody complains when we re-read, in groups, listen to the book on CD, or when the teacher reads. She's using an interesting technique, reading herself and then having students "fill in the blank" by pausing, and then having the students respond orally in unison. I do think they're understanding quite well. Whether it's improving their reading is another story, although we are having them do other activities when they rotate. They're reading the story with us half the class, and then either doing "Academy of Reading" or "Reading Naturally," so they do get well-balanced instruction in reading and in English/language arts, as the class promises.

Nov 16

Ben a long time; I've been out for a conference and am just now getting back into the swing of things. I hate that I missed the discussion on a couple of chapters! I'm continuing to think about how we teach and assess vocabulary. Clearly some children are memorizing definitions by just remembering a couple of words and then they're able to remember on the quiz. Not exactly the best for long-term memory. One problem is that we're giving them words in the definitions they can't understand, or definitions they can't understand. I'd say we should use open-ended questions instead of matching, but using matching is considered a good accommodation for students with disabilities who have memory / recall issues. What about using synonyms for definitions and retaining matching? That way students would really have to know the meaning of the definition, rather than the exact wording of the definition. Students are continuing to do really well on the single vocab quizzes, but when they get the test over four chapters of vocabulary, even though it's broken up into chunks of 8 or so words, they do not do as well. I'd really consider continuing to review as we go through the book.

Nov 4

It's always like pulling teeth to get children to write. In this school system they use a writing rubric that's consistent throughout grades. Normally I would think this strategy would be very effective, but these students naturally are very poor writers, and I'm pretty sure they don't follow the guidelines even when prompted. My guess is that they have had some very structured work with this rubric in the past, but for some reason it hasn't stuck with them. I'd really like to know what instruction they've had. Their writing skills are all over the board. It's hard to convince students who don't even like to read why they should write. Even though we have creative assignments they still have difficulty, and I'm not sure the editing (by an adult) really helps them the next time they write.

Nov 3

The students are really involved in the story we're reading! I am so impressed -- they seem to enjoy reading if you find something they're interested in, even though many of them say they don't read. I do think we're doing well with the book, going through it slowly. They don't even seem to mind listening to a chapter on CD when we've already read it in class, or vice versa. We used the small groups to review the story. The students really struggled with opinion questions. I know we talk about Bloom's Taxonomy incessantly, but this shows they really are not familiar with higher-order questions that require them to think. In my opinion this is a bad thing about special education, that we spend so much time dwelling on the factual that the real "thinking" is lost.

Nov 2

Today I started thinking about all the new students who had been added to our class since the beginning of the term. When you get a new student you often worry about behavior, but not these. I've been wondering how they could have been in their classes all the time and nobody realize they couldn't read well, that they really belonged in the lower level. I think the answer is behavior; this is a huge gap in our field. Students who behave well in class tend to fly under the radar more easily, in that nobody notices they're not achieving or can't read. The ones we notice first are the ones who can't behave, and so that's how they managed to stay in their classes for a month or two.

Oct 30

In favor or against the "teachable moment"... I have felt like we've had several such moments since beginning this book. When reading with my small group I really try to connect them with history. I feel good, but what comes of the "teachable moment?" Do we lose it? If we keep up with it, is it still a teachable moment, or does it become something else? I'm not sure how much students retain, no matter how well it is handled by the teacher. Perhaps the good ones (not sure if I'm talking about moments or teachers here) do stick, because they find their way into future lessons/discussions, in which the teacher keeps reinforcing the concept. We tend to measure teachers on these moments, at least when we're observing, but I'm personally not sure of the outcomes.

Oct 29

I've been grading the vocab tests for the chapter book and students are doing wonderfully! Unfortunately we've switched so many things around I can't sure at all that it's due to the book and the context. I like that we've had students highlight the words, and that we're both reading and listening to each chapter and answering questions in small groups. That may be reinforcing the vocabulary. One of the differences between the tests is that the new test is strictly multiple choice. The previous tests over the week's vocabulary were also multiple choice, but students copied down the words first, which were spoken by a teacher. They did not have the words written for them. Now I'm very curious about which one of these variables has made a difference in students' scores. Of course, it could also be that the students are more familiar with the vocab words from the text.

Oct 29

Today I had a chance to read with a small group of students who do read, but perhaps not fluently. I noticed all the mistakes they made -- transpositions, substitutions, deletions... they seemed to understand what they read but it was interesting to note this characteristic as a hallmark of a disfluent reader. It reinforces the need in my mind for reading instruction such as the Reading Naturally that we're doing, where students practice reading something fluently. I also wonder what impact this has on comprehension. They do seem to understand what they're reading. I'm learning a lot about non-beginning readers who are older but who are still struggling.

Oct 27

Long time.. we've been out for break and sickness. We're starting a novel now, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, and our vocab is now tied to the book. It makes me wonder how we teach vocab. I've discussed this before, and at least this is more in context, but how do we know / check whether students really retain these words? We'd have to do planned activities with the students, but we'd also have to pre- and post-test. I'm sure they already know many of these vocab words, and it varies quite a bit from student to student. Having students select their own vocab words might be more productive, but also time-consuming, and projects with the words would be more difficult from the teacher's point of view. Meanwhile, we're also testing with multiple choice, which is very common. It's also recommended for students with LD who might not be able to pick a definition out of their head even if they "know" the word. Of course, then we have to ask what "knowing" the word really means.

Oct 15

Today I worked more with students using "Reading Naturally." The students seemed genuinely engaged in listening to the stories, following along, and trying to read more fluently. As I mentioned previously, I'm not sure it's working so well for students who were already able to read the passage fluently, but for non-fluent readers, it seems to make a world of difference. I'd like to just sit them down for a longer period of time and see what happens. The "cold" and "hot" read timings are reinforcing to them and to me as an instructor. I'm impressed with this system.

The teachers have given up on DOL finally. What would have made this work? Probably introducing "new" concepts systematically -- e.g. starting with beginning capitalization and punctuation, then capitalizing names, places, etc. -- and adding on, being sure to go back and review periodically. Each week when we tested on Friday, we'd only test on what had been reviewed in the previous week and before. Additionally, if we had given points for a correct DOL sheet at the end of the week, perhaps students would have been more motivated to get started and to review their work when we reviewed it as a class. I'm sure it's not too difficult to get ahold of a plan of study for this type of grammar work.

Oct 14

I helped supervise a Reading Naturally fluency session, whereby students do a "cold read," listen to the passage on CD, time themselves, and get a "hot timing" done by a teacher. Then they have to read comprehension. My question is how fluent is fluent? Some of the students already seemed fluent, which they would be at their instructional level. Now it just seems like they're rushing when they try to beat their score. Fluency is just so important, but I'm not sure where we draw the line and say "enough." Comprehension is a part of this, but not a huge part. Also, how much above a child's instructional level is appropriate for them to practice? Obviously they shouldn't be missing a lot of words, but they would need to do some practice if it is a bit above their level.

Oct 12

Whew, a HUGE day. We introduced "The Watsons Go to Birmingham" with a little history lesson. Drove me just about crazy, because I love history and I love teaching history. So many of our students have a spotty record with history. Some never got it because they were pulled out for extra reading help. Anyway, I went to town with my small group. At the end I had them write down what they had learned about the '60s so they could refer to it. It's tough to find appropriate reading material in history for sixth graders with limited reading ability. As I discussed history with my small group, they started talking. It's so rural they really don't know any people of color and aren't ashamed to admit they're racist, they're afraid of Blacks, etc. I know this happens in so many communities, and it's tough for individuals and schools to address. I've suggested a speaker from my university and we'll see what happens. I'm sure a one-shot deal is not the best way to address this issue, but at least it will be a start.

It's so interesting to hear about students' conceptions of history. When they see pictures of war, they don't tie it to a certain era, just start guessing any war they can think of. Then that makes them think of other wars. So all of a sudden we're talking about WWII. I wonder what part of this is having so many children with ADHD, in that their stream-of-consciousness is often right out there for you to see. Perhaps we all think this way but are able to at least seem as though we're focused. They seemed to really need some kind of outline/structure to keep them focused on the era. They enjoyed the pop culture part, and we could really use that to introduce some of the other issues.

Oct 9

Today got me thinking about medication. I asked the special education teacher, "What did you do to D? He seems much calmer and is doing his work." She mentioned that he's medicated sometimes. There's another student with the same issues. He's either on task or he's way, way off task, even in trouble for behavioral issues. So how do we sort out when to medicate? Obviously this is an issue that troubles many people. I'd like to know how the students think about their own behavior on and off medication. By sixth grade they should be more conscious of it, but if they've grown up with it, who knows? It's easy for people to say no meds, period, but some children really can thrive in school with them.

Oct 8

Today I started thinking about something way, WAY outside my area of expertise. After listening to two paraprofessionals discussing teachers, I was wondering whether and how they could be used to participate in teacher evaluations. These are individuals who do have experience in classrooms, who sit in teachers' classrooms day in and day out. That's the critique of the one-shot in-and-out evaluations and administrators do -- that they cannot know the real context of the class. Paraprofessionals might not have the whole story but they see students, and they see students who struggle. They understand and positives and negatives of instruction. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of negative energy from paras in my time, but we have to realize that they are underpaid and undervalued overall. They may know more than the teacher quite often but have little input into instruction. How can this energy and expertise be channeled in such a way as to assist the school in this important function?

Oct 7

I had to ask myself today, "What is good teacher education?" It just so happens that a sped major from my institution is in our classroom for her practicum. What if I were really supervising her? Wouldn't that be good teacher education? Would I give her different feedback from the teacher? to me, this would be great teacher education. A professor out in the classroom so s/he knows the teacher and students. An observation that's more than a one-shot deal by someone who knows neither the teacher, the content, nor the students. Plus, she's doing some work with a general ed major. The two of them seemed pretty tight. Surely this is also good teacher education, and I'm hoping some good conversations are occurring in transit. More can get done this way, if done correctly, than anything else. The informal connections are so important, but they have to be structured.

Another thing that we all need more of is time. What if we all sat down together -- the university professor, me, the teacher, and the student. I know it would be intimidating for the student, so it would have to be set up in such a way that did not seem like an inquisition. This would be an amazing opportunity to discuss the teacher candidates' possibilities in in-depth ways and use the different perspectives to advantage. I'll have to ask my students about this one, how this could be accomplished without being a terrible experience intimidation-wise. Meanwhile, this is exactly what works in teacher ed: a teacher candidate having a hands-on experience and having the opportunity to debrief and learn from the situation with the guidance of more experienced professionals. I'd argue it's one of the only things that we actually KNOW works in teacher ed.

Oct 6

Today I got a positive response from one of those unlikeable students you're always telling yourself you have to work harder to reach. This particular student unfortunately fits the description of a typical "bully" -- overweight, tall, shoves other students, not particularly agreeable, doesn't do his work, etc. But I always tell my students these are the ones who need us the most, so I had better practice what I preach. Yesterday I told him that I had meant to mention last week before I got sick that he did a great job on his essay from that week, had a good attitude and got right down to writing, which is not an easy task for him. He actually seemed pleased, and for the first time called me over by name today. He even said goodbye to me by name yesterday. This doesn't mean it's permanent, but sometimes I'm amazed at how little it takes. He also showed an interest in work for one of the first times, and showed me that he was on task and that he had completed some of his assignments. I certainly shouldn't take full responsibility for this turn-around in behavior, but why not?

Oct 5

GREAT to be back after being out sick last week. I feel refreshed and had a wonderful day! I remember this feeling as a teacher. Again, we're redoing the grammar. I know that teaching grammar explicitly is considered an "evidence-based practice" in my field, but perhaps we need to refine what that looks like and how it connects to writing. Even going back to nouns and verbs with this group is challenging. We reviewed pronouns explicitly last week and they're still unable to get them with the first "guess."

We also worked on our essays. I encouraged students to write in the customary format -- put everything they want to write about upfront, then write a bit about each thing, then close. They had to plan out their writing ahead of time, but didn't seem to be able to follow through well with writing more about each thing they wanted to say in order. I think it will take some more direct instruction in essay writing. I'm sure it does not look good for them when it comes to the state writing test.

Sep 29

Today I got a good look at how sixth graders view professors! They had conjured up a picture of me in a white lab coat in a lab, mixing together chemicals that exploded and made my hair stand up on end! I explained to them that I wasn't a science professor, that I actually just taught teachers. How boring!

Now that we have our new configuration I'm more on my own than before, in a way. I'm working with a para to teach 1/3 of our class at a time. I think discipline should be a bit of an issue, even though they know me, because they know neither of us is a "real" teacher. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime it was difficult today to keep my firm rule about not contradicting a teacher in front of students. Unfortunately my partner did not keep that rule, and it was about a pronoun worksheet! I'll try to leave a bit earlier tomorrow to make sure we're on the same page. Respect in the classroom is really important to me -- teacher to teacher, teacher to student. Of course student to student is always a nice goal too--

Sep 28

The teachers are planning to "switch things up" again -- we're dividing the class into three and doing stations. I'm either going to be with grammar or with reading. I think I could be successful with both, although I'll have to work on the grammar(!) It makes me consider how difficult it is for teachers to really change things, to try something new. It's an unbelievable amount of work. Plus, you want to keep things consistent for students, yet you have to change if you feel that something could be more effective. So students will have to change yet again. I feel that the small groups of 4-5 were very effective, but if you then have the group of 8-9 and can split that up further, or have two adults with the small-ish groups, that could be helpful. Some of the stations will require them to read at their level, which is quite positive. I'm anxious because I don't really know what my role will be come tomorrow, but welcome to teaching...

Sep 25

I was out for two days at the university; you always miss so much when you're not there. It seems like I'm playing hooky even though I really don't have to be there to begin with! Today's game was a great example of a several teaching principles at work. The teacher was reinforcing adverbs by having students pick a scenario and then act it out using an adverb that his/her peers had to guess (e.g. acting out asking "What's for dinner?" by saying it slowly, then the students had to guess "slowly"). The students really seemed to enjoy the acting, watching their peers acting, and trying to guess adverbs that might fit. They showed more knowledge of vocabulary than we had thought, searching for synonyms. That was rather a "teaching bonus." The general education teacher has a plastic cup for every class with all students' names in tongue depressors in it. Then the teacher just has to draw out a name, which I think is a creative way to call on students.

I also noticed how students do not seem to be upset when they're wrong. I don't think it's that terrible to tell students they're wrong as long as it's not done in a punitive fashion and other students aren't allowed to make fun. There's a lot of talk about how you shouldn't tell at-risk students they're wrong, because they're always told that, but I think you can do it in such a way that it doesn't hurt their self-esteem. Special educators I think are especially good at pointing out when students are doing something right, academics or behavior, and I think that adds to the type of positive atmosphere in which students feel they can take risks and try to answer a question, even if they might have the wrong answer. There was a lot of engagement in this activity and I think it was a good way to reinforce adverbs.

Sep 22

Today was a bit challenging, but I certainly got lots of material for my undergrads! The sped teacher I'm working with took it personally that I gave an assessment of student progress, because she thought it meant I was saying she was a bad teacher. Of course this never crossed my mind, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I chose the wrong course of action. I should have instead talked with them privately and expressed my concerns. Even that might not have worked, but the students actually did not know the material. Then the teacher wanted me to "re-teach" on the spot. Such is the case with real teaching -- sometimes you just have to make it up as you go along! Not my forte, but that's why I decided to do this project. It's because I miss the immediacy of needing to come up with something, now, or react to student behavior out in left field, now.

So, you may ask, what did I do? I decided to create an outline with the students and have them save it for their records. It was an outline of all the parts of speech they had learned. Only one or two had ever heard of an outline before, but they did a very nice job participating. I was very pleased to see their willingness to participate when I was leading the discussion. They weren't afraid to make a mistake in front of me, which is great. So we outlined and reviewed each of the parts of speech we had learned, and discussed how to make an outline along the way. I told them when I used outlines in my work, and how it's easy to remember the new stuff and forget the old. As one student said, "It just flies away with the wind," which is exactly what does happen!

Things went from bad to worse. The teacher asked me to teach adverbs when I had told her I wasn't good at adverbs. She said I was on a roll and should keep going. As I was still in the doghouse, I couldn't refuse. Again my fault for not preparing because I didn't think I'd be teaching the material! I made it through everything until we had to come up with examples and I had to tell students whether they were right or wrong. I got help from the other teachers in the room, which was embarrasing on my part but also a bit of a bonding experience. We professors don't know everything, but it could be argued, and quite well, that we should know our adverbs.

Sep 21

We're trying to introduce one new part of speech each week. This week we're moving on to adverbs after breezing through adjectives, which I don't think these students get. I gave them an informal quiz to evaluate, and it looks as though about a quarter of the class is confusing adjectives with verbs, and a couple with pronouns. We did verbs before adjectives, and pronouns before that, so it looks as though the confusion is snowballing. I emailed the teachers, so hopefully we'll be able to review that. It's just like college, where you learn something, get tested, and then forget it, and on it goes. I'm still not convinced, though, that teaching parts of speech is actually going to help with writing. Not that I'm so skilled at making this connection for them.

We did almost the entire class in small groups today, and it was highly effective at least for my group. They say checking engagement is what it's about, and I could really see that today. I introduced the vocab words by using real sentences, not just reading the definitions to the whole class. One of our reading assessments was about child labor. It encouraged students to think about the story and make and write down predictions and thoughts as they went along. Even though that's like pulling teeth it was helpful to them later when the worksheet presented them with multiple-choice questions regarding the vocab words and events in the passage they had just read. I also looked up some famous child labor photos for them with captions. It's so rewarding when students actually seem interested in what you're teaching. I had them do a little math as well, figuring out how long ago these events occurred. They always seem to respond so well when I look up photos, maps, etc. on the Internet to accompany the story they're reading -- they don't even try to horse around when they get up to see the computer. Amazing.

Meanwhile, I think we are doing some good in this class, but it still doesn't feel organized to me. We do a little of this and a little of that, and someone needs to put it together. We do DOL, grammar, writing, spelling, and reading. This is probably why someone thought up state standards, to help teachers get organized. Not sure if it works, though.

Sep 18

As a rather timid co-teacher (or I was in the past), it's interesting to see how the special educator I'm working with has made the class "hers," perhaps even more so than the gened teacher. The classroom actually "belongs" to the general educator, so this is some feat. Even though these teachers don't seem to collaborate much, except with the schedule (they have totally different philosophies and teaching styles, and occasionally seem a bit suspicious of each other), the special educator says to the students, "I want to see ___." She uses "I" a lot, which I suppose could be "we," but it works to her advantage, in that students definitely see her as an equal in the classroom. There's really no ask-the-"real"-teacher discussion going on; they know there are two teachers and that's that.

I also was party to an interesting conversation between classes. A general ed teacher was talking to the special educator about a particular student and noting the need for a parent conference. The general consensus was there was no way he'd make it through sixth grade with the same passive behavior that had been allowed before. The general ed teacher said it was impossible to give him the one-on-one he needs to keep him on task in a classroom of 30. We have 25, 6 adults, and we can't give him the attention he needs either. Because most of his behaviors appear to be directed at himself rather than at others, I'm guessing he's slipped under the radar for years. I've mentioned this student to the school psych before; he shows behaviors that definitely don't really fit under his LD or ADHD label, such as flapping arms, talking to himself, occasional lack of eye contact, talking too loudly, other odd verbal behaviors. I'd say "aspergers" but of course I'm not quaified! We say that too quickly anyway.

At any rate, the consensus was that he's not doing his work because he's never been "made" to do his work, just allowed to do his own thing. In my opinion, that could be part or all of it, but we're not really asking why he doesn't do his work. Last psych eval noted some odd behaviors and verbalizations during testing, but it was never followed up. What good would it do, though, to have another label? It might give us a reason for the behaviors, but what difference would it make in his educational plan? I think we have to ask this before going for labels. Of course, maybe it's something the doctors would like to "fix" through pharmacology. That's certainly not uncommon. But to what end? I'm not sure there's a right answer here, but at least the teachers are bringing in the parent to discuss. I'm afraid we're going to look more punitive than anything.

Sep 17

Now we're getting the hang of it... sort of. All those adults in the room and we were doing all these full-group activities. Now that I worked hard to get ahold of the appropriate reading level for Reading Naturally.... we didn't have enough stations. We tried to rotate stations today but ended up overlapping, so nobody could get anything done! Anyway, we're trying something different, and I can see the students are so much more responsive in small groups, just as we always say.

I'm really starting to wonder about DOL. We do it every day but our students still don't use capitalization and punctuation in their writing. They have to be reminded. Also, they may correct the mistakes during DOL, but they find more "mistakes" that were actually correct-- particularly spelling, putting in apostrophes that don't belong, capitalizing letters in the middle of sentences. Teaching writing is tough, and I'm not sure that we really know what we're doing here (and that includes me). I'm just thinking that the DOL may not be the way to go. Perhaps the way to go is to have them write for five minutes, then go over each one in a small group. The idea is to practice the same skills rather than skipping around, although I realize this idea is very controversial.

Again students fighting to be in my group!

Sep 16

Maybe this is what my role is here... teachers are so often limited by what they have in front of them, and for obvious reasons! We're planning to do some individualized fluency work, but our lowest reading level is 4.0. We have at least one student who tests much lower than this, and I was concerned that using 4.0 would not only frustrate him, but wouldn't help. He really needs something on his level. So I went next door to the elementary school and asked the reading specialist to borrow the same fluency package, but on a lower level. She said we could have it for six weeks, just as simple as that. Hope this works, because I'm coming in early to help prepare everything. The directions are a bit complex as to what they do when, so hope it's easy to figure out the CDs. Everyone has a different story on his/her level, but if we end up doing this consistently, I think it will be a good thing.

Sep 14

Bad behavior today! and guess what we were doing? Writing, of course. The bad behavior comes out when they are given an "opportunity" to write something more than a couple of lines. So interesting. They were asked to write about a vacation. Well, low-income students are likely to not have experienced a vacation. Several wrote about a class trip or a trip to the closest amusement park. Even that is something. Perhaps not the best topic. The students' writing ability is very diverse. Some can write but not spell; some can spell but not write. Some will sit down and write something and you know they can speak better than that; well, they can all speak better than they write, but it's interesting that some don't write in complete sentences. The grammar is supposed to address that, of course, but the tie-in is most difficult.

We need to address behavior better. We'll see if the two detentions given out today do something for the class. Not sure about that. I suggested spreading them out more. Even with all the assistance they have, all the adults in the room, some of them just plain couldn't get started with their writing. Most of them will do it if you sit down with them on-on-one. I'm starting to really see the incredible value of writing, but it's quite tough to teach, even if spelling isn't an issue.

Sep 10

New kid in class, came from the district next door (which is in another state), nobody tells anyone until the fourth week of school that he can't read. How often does this happen? And oh yes, he also has been labeled with emotional/behavioral disabilities. So we don't know what to expect. He was placed in our class quite abruptly last week, and now the special education teacher tells me she's still waiting for his move-in conference.

This happens so often, and teachers are left trying to do something. The child ends up placed in a "holding pattern." These are so often students who really need the consistency, who are moving schools, and now they're being bumped around to different classes and different teachers until someone figures out what to do. We can't (we do, but we shouldn't) really blame the administration, because they always have a bunch of these to take care of. Many times schools don't really know who they have until the first day or later. How can we make time for even informal move-in conferences? Since this particular student has emotional / behavioral issues, do we wait until something serious comes up? (which it clearly could any time).

This student shows the kind of reading level I expected in many of our lower students in this class, although we didn't see it. I would guess he's around the beginning of second grade, but we'll see. He might be lower. The materials we had on hand were not low enough, and now we're scrambling to figure out what to do about reading groups. After test results are in we're going to gain some students and lose others. This was an online test that's supposed to predict how well students are going to do in sixth grade. Some of our students actually passed! Of course, that means they're not supposed to be in our class.

Sep 9

Today I realize again why teachers have a hard time stepping "outside the box." We did a creative activity, and even with plenty of planning upfront, plenty of direct instructions about procedures etc., it was fairly wild. This includes physical contact, throwing things, inappropriate remarks, etc. Perhaps if students were required to stay in their own seats and we passed out the items needed, it would have been easier. But give up some of that control, and the teacher is the one who gets punished.

We were introducing verbs, so the sped teacher gave them the assignment to cut out some action pictures from magazines and write sentence strips. Sounds like much more engaging than what we're used to. I gave an "easy" spelling test, going back to the beginning of the Dolch word list. Most did well; maybe I need to move up on the list a bit, but then again, I haven't really taken a hard look at results yet.

Sep 8

I graded our DOL-type quiz over the weekend and found the scores were atrocious. The teacher grades them differently from how I do. She does not take off points if the students get something extra wrong (i.e. they try to "fix" something that's already correct), and I do. I started thinking about whether it's "fair" to ask something for a grade we haven't covered in class. In a way, of course it's fair! Students are already supposed to know all this -- capitalization, punctuation, grammar, spelling, but for example, a huge number of them missed "plain" instead of "plane," "there" instead of "their" when we hadn't gone over it the previous week.

I'm not sure there is an answer to this question. We can't start over at the beginning for everything, but neither can we let students continue to miss points for things we haven't directly addressed in class. Things like this are worse with struggling students, because we tend to re-teach content every single year, esp the "basics" like grammar, spelling, math facts, and on and on. When is it fair game for testing, though?

Sep 4

So much time is lost during transitions, it continues to drive me crazy. All the time -- even at home with my children. This class is no different. Each morning we want them to come into class, open up their assignment books, and start their Daily Oral Language, which is correcting some sentences on the board and on their sheets with incorrect spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, etc. This is every day but Friday, and they still do not have it down. We need to tell them every single time, it seems, although some do have it.

So what if we had stood beside their desks every single day as they came in, had them get out their papers, and get to work? Then we could fade this. The problem is that we've allowed intermittent reinforcement to go to work; in other words, because they only "have" to get to work some of the time, the first thing they want to try is to goof around, because sometimes they're allowed to do it, or at least they're allowed to do it until a teacher tells them to get busy.

Sep 3

Today we took the students to library. I was so surprised to find that struggling 6th grade readers still seem to enjoy picking out books and at least looking at them, if not reading them. I understand why the teacher wanted them to be quiet, but to me it was quite positive seeing them reading from and discussing a book, regardless of content (I suspect other teachers might not be so happy about some of the selections, but there you go). I wonder what we can do to continue to cultivate this as students get older. There are certainly plenty of "book discussion" group models out there; I'm wondering if we might be able to do something like this.

I'm still really enjoying our reading group. Today I took a map of our state to show the students where the events actually occurred, and they seemed to enjoy looking at it and finding where they live and where others in their family live etc. I'm thinking a bit more about the reading group and considering asking the teacher whether I can do something else. We're all enjoying reading the story, but the questions afterwards take a long time to read and do. I'm thinking about how to test comprehension in other ways. Multiple-choice questions just don't seem to do it. Although I think the author did a decent job of looking at other kinds of thinking, I'd like to see what else I can come up with here.

Sep 2

Now THIS is why I love teaching. I found myself standing in front of the class (I know, I know, no REAL classroom should have a designated front or back, but this one does) leading students in responding aloud to a rap! This is NOT me at all. Teaching gets me out of my comfort zone. I've found our class is so boring someone has to do something. So their vocab/spelling comes with a rap, which is what made it attractive to teachers, I think. Most of the time the rap is so contrived it's ridiculous, so silly it's actually fun. This one has a "back" going "roar" and the "front" going "oop-oop," and yes, yours truly led it. That's really what it's all about.

Meanwhile the sped teacher has talked to me about trying to use our personnel a little better, so I'm taking this as an opening to try to get some more creative groupings and most importantly, to get them more engaged in their learning. It can be so personalized with all these people, so let's get out there and do it.

Also I've been thinking about special educator roles and responsibilities. I know the sped teacher I work with has all the students with mild disabilities on her caseload, which is about 50. I asked her whether she thinks she'd be more effective just working consult, that is, spending her day just keeping up with these 50 children, making sure they're caught up in classes, doing re-teaching, etc. She said she probably could be more effective that way but there'd be nothing to look forward to if she wasn't teaching. That's the thing, we special educators love to teach, but there's no research that says what delivery model makes us most effective with students.

Sep 1

It was really helpful today that one of the students said he'd rather go to the laptop lab and take an online state test than sit in class all period. We do have a really boring class. Especially with the parapros we could be doing a lot of small-group activities. I'm working on how to bring this up without being pushy. But I'm obviously not doing too well or it would already be done by now. In some situations it's really hard for me to be assertive, but particularly when working with people who are older than I am and in a different situation.

Next week the general ed teacher will be out. I think the sped teacher already planned out what we're doing for the week. A lot of grammar worksheets as before. I need to think of an activity where they might actually use, say, pronouns, in the course of completing an activity. Teaching grammar explicitly is an evidence-based practice for teaching writing to students with LD, so somehow they must be able to make the connection between what is taught and their actual writing. It's tough to think of motivating writing activities, although it's my opinion that these students really aren't too tough in terms of getting them to write.

Aug 31

Today as I saw another day of full-class activities, I thought about how important it is to be sure every child is engaged in full-class instruction. The sped teacher I'm working with is creative about this, and often combines it with physical movements too, such as: if you're listening, put your hand on your head; if you have your homework away and your paper in front of you, stand up; etc. I wonder how whiteboard responses would work with this class. Actually, the class seems remarkably well-behaved, even though the paraprofessionals don't really take much of an active role. We need to do something to increase engagement and not just listlessness. They're pretty good at just sitting, which is good and not good. It's sort of a false sense that they're learning just because they're not acting up (well, it appears that way to me). I've been really itching to introduce the vocabulary words. I always think of a lot of connections I want to share, but I'm certainly not going to interrupt the teacher to try to do something I think is creative. Not a great way to make friends.

I again enjoyed my reading group. I try to ask comprehension questions that incorporate other subjects. For example we were reading about golf, so we discussed why lower scores are better and how to calculate how many strokes it took the golfer per hole. The story takes place in the same state in which we live, so I'm bringing a map to class tomorrow. I've been reading about how even college students have absolutely no idea how to read maps. They're very engaged in this group, in discussing details about the story. I'm also working on summarizing paragraphs after they're read. The book is very well-organized in that paragraphs are numbered and generally stick to the topic, so it's easy to summarize. I tell my students that summarizing written material is the #1 study skill that students need, or #1 writing skill, to succeed in higher grades.

Aug 27

Left for school before 7:30 this morning, only to find the student I was to observe was absent. So typical. Today we did "skills bank" in the computer lab. This pretests students on grammar and usage skills, then provides lessons and quizzes in different areas, such as nouns, verbs, etc. I'm wondering whether we ever use this to complement what we've done in the classroom, or whether it's just an activity that is supposedly individualized and works in a computer lab with a group of any size.

We didn't get to reading groups at all today, so I'm wondering about the use of all the parapros in our classroom. Even when we do get to read, it's only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the class time anyway. We have so many adults in there, I feel like we should be really shaking things up, getting the children involved in their learning in many different ways. At the very least, small groups!

I started thinking about grammar today, and teaching grammar. Why do we teach about nouns and verbs? I assume we do it so students can learn correct sentence structure. But I'm not sure we ever make it that far. We just want them to be able to identify the different parts of speech, and not how they go together to make grammatically correct sentences. Of course, this is not really a strength of mine either.

Aug 26

Very exciting! Today I was asked to come early tomorrow to do a student observation. Like we have so many times in special education, there's a new student from another state who has some serious emotional issues, who's between doctors, between parents/guardians, and who has already had an outburst before we received any paperwork. I sure hope I can help.

I also enjoyed working in my reading group. We're reading some true stories, and our first was about a man who was lost in the Maine wilderness as a pre-teen. One of my group members was finished early, so we looked him up on the Internet. We found new pictures of him as an 80-year-old, old newspaper clippings, and even a recent video clip of him. The students were fascinated. It's amazing how easy it is to add geography, history etc. to our usual assignments and how motivating that is. It seems like a "teachable moment," but I'm not sure I always have faith in them.

Speaking of teachable moments, I took a minute to tell students about the research in student outcomes; that is, students who have better work and life outcomes are the ones who know their strengths and weaknesses and are able to ask for help where they need it. I can't imagine a one-minute lecture took hold too much, but I tried. It came up when the teacher was modeling how she's good at writing, but would take longer to work on math. I don't think it hurts to walk students through things like this. Additionally, a student asked me point-blank whether this was the lowest-level reading class. I made a split-second decision to tell him the truth. I told him that it was, but it wasn't a contest, and that all of their reading skills were better than we thought. All true. He didn't seem to be discouraged, but I still felt guilty anyway. I do believe in telling students the truth.

Aug 24

While driving to school this morning, I started thinking about data. We think our data points accurately describe a child's reading, or at very least, in, say, fluency, but then we group these children into small groups and their reading varies quite widely. I have to say I'm not sure I'm doing what I should be doing with this small group. We've been reading interesting true stories, high-interest, low-vocabulary as they're called, and then I ask comprehension questions. I had a good time looking up some background geography and showing the students where our latest story occurred (on a mountain in Maine). It was neat to see them make the connection and see what the mountain actually looks like. When the story mentioned the boy walked 90 miles, we talked about how far that would be from the school.

So here are four readers, and supposedly I'm in charge of teaching them to read better. Will reading stories round-robin really help them, in reading fluency or otherwise? Perhaps. I always say that just reading on the child's level will be helpful. Will answering questions about the story help with comprehension? Maybe I need to get them to ask the questions. We did try some summarizing, which I think is a nice start.

Of course I realize the types of ability-grouping we're doing is really looked down upon by many education professionals. However, I think we're coming to terms with some kind of agreement that it may be necessary for readers who are way behind.

Aug 24

Today it occurred to me that we really need to focus on how to speak politely to students. I feel like we bark orders at children, ridicule them in minor ways in front of their peers etc. on a daily basis, and they're expected to comply with whatever we say. Even though the students were compliant and nobody talked back, a bit of courtesy would have gone a long way in class today.

What else do we tell them? We won't grade their papers if they have their name incorrectly, they'll get a detention if they're standing at their seat instead of sitting, etc. I'm definitely not for leniency in most things, but really -- what kind of learning goals are we accomplishing here?

I was totally thrilled this morning to be given my own reading group. I have the next to the lowest readers, four of them. We began reading a true "lost in the wilderness" story. I helped them situate it first -- it took us awhile to discover it was set in 1939. We were all talking about how cell phones wouldn't have worked etc. We also talked about where Maine was on the map. I might just bring in a map next time and maybe look up some stats for the mountain we were reading about. They all seemed quite willing to read and answer questions in the small group.

Aug 21

Yesterday I started thinking about syllabi, and how at the college level we're always so careful to put in how students will be graded, points for this and that etc. In K-12 we just seem to randomly throw out points, this will be graded, this won't... students are confused. Even though I work with students the majority of whom tend to not care about grades, I think this courtesy should be extended to them as well. Yesterday the students (and I) were surprised when they found that a homework was worth 50 points and something else was only worth 5. It didn't even make sense to me, but they have no way to track their grade. It's tough enough to encourage low-achieving students to care about their grades, although it seems like some of these students do.

Again more of a struggle to determine reading level. This weekend I've taken all the data home to try to organize students into ability groups by their scores. We now have four one-minute fluency timings for many of these students, so we should have some good data. I have also graded Friday's the D.O.L. quiz, and results are abysmal. How do we teach capitalization, punctuation, and grammar to children who haven't mastered it yet? I'm pretty sure it's not the same thing we've been doing with them. I need to look up the research for this. The sped research says direct instruction of grammar conventions, but not sure how to accomplish this. Right now it's hit and miss, and we're clearly missing.

Aug 20

Who ever thought giving a spelling test would be so much fun? I thought we should give a "practice test" so students know what to study for tomorrow. Students seem to be really interested in the fact that I'm a teacher at the university, which is nice. We'll see how they do.

We've been doing the D.O.L. thing every day, and I'm beginning to wonder about that. Of course we assume that if children can do that well, they should be able to edit their own writing well, but I'm not sure that's the case. I think about all the D.O.L. done every day across the country and wonder whether it can be done better. It's the old debate about whether we teach skills in isolation or have them all put together. Of course, a combination is best, but when you take a look at even one of these, you realize all the grammar and spelling rules that have to be taught and learned.

We also gave everyone another one-minute fluency timing, because the rest of the class did so much better on their second timing than on the first. Hopefully we can get a handle on this data. I'm planning to take everything home over the weekend to give a solid look at each student's individual score on each of our assessments. They're far from perfect, but hopefully all together it will give us a complete enough picture that we will be able to assess the students' needs and figure out who needs the most help. I'll be taking those students out (I know, horrible, ability-grouping, bad, bad) with the special educator in order to give them some more focused reading instruction the second half of class.

Aug 19

When the principal comes in the room everyone gets nervous! Even I was thinking how lucky I am that she found me actually doing something helping students. I want her to be pleased that I'm there, not like I'm looking around to find something to pick on or to write about in that "research" those professors do.

Today I began questioning why we're doing spelling and vocab together. Especially for students who are this far behind, their spelling is atrocious. Students with LD or students who are just behind without the label might not have a vocabulary that is on-grade-level (in fact, we know they don't), but I would say their vocabulary is way above their spelling. So we're having children study the spelling of, let's say, fourth grade vocab words, when they can't tell the difference between "right" and "write." Maybe we should start with those in a systematic way, but I'm not sure we do. Individualized spelling lists may be the way to go, but again, do these lists add up to anything when all is said and done? We need to find a way to review and keep children actively involved in these.

I also had the opportunity to watch the special educator do her thing. There's something about watching a special educator teach that's different from watching a general educator, and I'm trying to put that into words. She's direct (or he, I should say), watchful, knows who's doing what and not afraid to discuss what's going on, lightly humorous, getting down to business quickly. There's something about the type of humor I can't pinpoint, but something that doesn't put children down for not knowing, automatically reinforcing children who are doing the right thing. I need to get in there and do some full-class activities.

At this point we're not using our personnel well. We have four instructional assistants aside from the two teachers and myself, and we continue to do full-class activities that are the same for everyone. We're also struggling with the testing. This is very helpful for me as a teacher educator, since I think we tend to believe that one one-minute fluency timing tells us all we need to know. We did the fourth grade passage, and 4.5 for those who did well with 4.0. Because all the students we retested did so much better on the 4.5 I suggested testing everyone on 5.0. We have to start that tomorrow.

Meanwhile my grammar assessment showed that the class average was about 50%, but we did have some students who scored fairly well. There were two 14/15s and two 12/15s. I was really glad I took the time to write little notes to each child's parent -- they clearly felt proud they did well.

I also noted that sixth graders aren't too old to have all the hands in the air to answer a question Also they're not afraid to read aloud, a common issue for children with reading problems. It's easy to see all the hands in the air and assume everyone's engaged, though, and clearly this isn't the case, even with all the adults in the room. Makes me feel we should be doing something else-- planning small group activities at very least! I suggested a practice test tomorrow; I'm not sure if the students really understand they'll be tested Friday on vocab/spelling for a grade.

Aug 18 cont'd

Another thing that occurs to me is that we're starting to count fluency as the only measure of reading. I myself am guilty of this. Clearly, these students have been timed before and are used to it, but I realize as they're reading that I'm taking no measurement of whether they're understanding what they're reading. Of course fluency and comprehension go hand in hand, but ... some of the mistakes they're making show that they might not comprehend, when they don't go back and self-correct.

Aug 18

The first thing we did today was listen to a "rap" to assist in vocab learning. I can understand why we think this is a good idea -- because it's motivating and gets more senses involved. BUT... we have to do more with it. This one is particularly convoluted and I don't know what child in his/her right mind would think this one was "cool." We have to engage children in using the vocab in multiple ways, not just receiving it passively. So maybe we could have the words on the walls, have them practice spelling and covering, saying the words in a sentence, or maybe performing parts of the rap in front of peers. Small group work might be helpful, something non-worksheet-oriented. Making your own rap would be hard; maybe we could find some kind of poem outline.

We took children outside individually to retest those who needed testing on a higher level. We were shocked when every single child did better; one went from 100 words on a 4.0 passage to 140 on a 4.5 passage! How could this happen? We profs tell our students that this is the way to go -- test children on a one-minute fluency timing, and that's their level. How could this happen? I'll tell you, the children seemed a lot more relaxed this time; maybe, as one instructional assistant said, they went out with us last time, nothing bad happened, so they weren't actually in trouble as we said. So maybe you have to do multiple timings with passages at different levels. I'm recommending that everyone be retested at the 5.0 level.

Then there's this issue -- these children were put in this particular class because they were reading at 4.0 level, or two grades behind. Now we're wondering why some of them are here. Of course we're assuming they have fluency issues, but maybe they don't. I'm planning a comprehension assessment, but my guess is it's more likely to be class behavior, attitude, perhaps very poor spelling, etc. I believe these children were placed in this class as a result of one test score, from a standardized test taken last year. So now I'm wondering whether the classes are going to be shuffled around, and as always, I'm wondering what we're going to be doing for them.

First day of school!

Great, my first day back and I make someone cry. I was reading an assessment too quickly. I must have lost that feel for how slowly you need to read to a group of low readers. I gave them a 15-item fourth grade grammar inventory, and the results were a dismal 9/15. I wonder whether these actually correspond with writing and speaking ability. We teach grammar all the time, but does knowing nouns and verbs, and being able to select the correct plurals on the multiple-choice quiz actually mean anything?

Also, as we're going to be spending a fair amount of time each day studying vocab and spelling words -- how can we individualize this? Surely some children already know these words, and some don't. Here we have an ability-grouped classroom, which many people would condemn just because it's all low-achievers, but I can already tell how tough it is for the low-achievers here, even with seven adults in the room. How can we give each child a spelling list and vocab list? and do we even want to do this? Spelling tests are ubiquitous by now, but we don't know whether the students retain what they're learning beyond Friday. And if they knew it before, why are we spending time on it?

I know I still drive my college students crazy by spending every minute of class time learning. It was a criticism on my student evals. It's my punishment for trying to practice what I preach. But how much time are we wasting shuffling around papers? with waiting for a few children to catch up to the large group? And we haven't even explained to students WHY they're taking all these pretests. I must get on that.