Extra Extra!

Once again we have tweeked the schedule to allow extra time for students that need additional one-on-one assistance.  I am now working with a kindergarten student, three times a week for 15-20 minutes.  We will be focusing exclusively on letter idenitification.  Hopefully this additonal practice will bring her up to par with the other ESL students.  

Split

A challenge of combining different classes of the same grade is that sometimes the teachers choose to insert or skip reading stories during the year.  When this occurs, you have two groups with different spelling words and related stories.  Worst case scenario, one class is reading a novel - this requires the entire week's sessions to be devoted to the reading and answering assigned questions. 

This week, two of the 4th grade classes have chosen to skipthe shorter "Time Life" story (which they will usually use during a shortened week - like next week's 3 day Fall Break week); whereas, one class is not.  This throws the routine off for this week and next until the classes reunite 2 stories from now. 

Fortunately, we have begun one of the lower classes on the Reading Academy computer-based learning software program and this will allow them to work on that while the other students continue the usual routine.  This class also is scheduled for more time that can be used specifically for spelling and reading. 

It is a unique situation, but we are making the most of it.  I am really excited to see the results of the program first hand.

Monday Morning

The 4th graders missed ESL today, they were scheduled to visit the planetarium.  The schedule for planetarium trips is on a 3-week rotation and offers the students an exciting opportunity to learn about science in a more hands-on and visual dominant way.  Even though they are missing a session of work, I think that this is an interesting experience for them and is especially helpful for some of my students that don't learn as well by reading information on a page.

The first graders that see me twice a day performed poorly on their spelling test last week.  I maintain that even with the extra practice we are doing, that if they fail to practice or study at home they will not succeed in this area.  Part of learning spelling words is memorization, and that takes time and effort.  Although, I do think the words were particularly difficult last week with the "qu" blend.  Based on this mornings pre-test, the students did not take any time to look over there words this weekend, but since they are marginally less challenging, the results may be slightly improved.  Crossing my fingers.

The kindergarteners need to be tested using the "Running Records" exam.  My biggest concern is that our ESL students have not yet learned there letters, and thus are not reading at any level.  I am interested to see how tests are scored when a student is not yet a Level A reader.   

Thursday Blues

Thursday is very much a review day.  Students mostly take their reading comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling tests on Friday.  Today is the last day to really practice the information and make sure that the students are prepared for the assessments. 

With my first grade groups, we are concentrating on rhyming words using their tricky words.  This is a concept that many of the students did not grasp in kindergarten for various reasons and will become increasingly important to them to be able to identify words that have the same ending sounds.

Child Abuse

Last Thursday, the professional development session focused on child abuse.  Although I considered myself fairly aware of the signs of child abuse or neglect; the obvious.  I realized that there was a considerable amount of information that is not highly publicized or recreated on your average Lifetime movie.

This week coincidentily I became acutely aware of a potential problem concerning this issue for one of my students.  Shocked, I went through the steps that we discussed which led to meeting with my principal.  I was amazed that just a simple overview of the things that school personnel should be on the lookout for, helped me to readily identify a possible risky situation. 

Alphabet

Kindergarten is progressing slowly with their abc idenitification. They are now on there 4th set of letters.  We are still working on colors, shapes, and numbers; but the focus is on the alphabet.  There is such a great mandate for learning the alphabet as the foundation for learning tricky words and being able to read starting in January with basic level A readers, that it is a pertinent skill for them to acquire.  There is one student that is particularly lower than the other 2 and can identify very few of the letters despite constant repetition.  This is going to become a hinderance very fast, if it is not already.  I am concerned that her lack of any language and previous educational experience will slow her learning down.  I have worked with 2 of her older siblings and they both still struggle on basic skills.  I was hoping that they would use their English skills to prepare her a little better for school, but even though she can speak in broken English conversational sentences and be understood - she appears to be retaining very little of the information we work on in ESL or that is worked on in class.   

Benefits

For the first time since the one 4th grader started missing his recess to receive extra time, he did not have any homework or classwork with him.  He is up-to-date on all of his assignments and is actually turning in his homework.  Now, we will be able to work on some other skills to help him succeed without limiting the work in order to have time for his graded work.  I'm hopeful that we might be able to cut back his time after the first grading period as a reward for his hard work.