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.