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.