November 10, 2011
A. My feelings towards my teacher are just purely confused. I came into the classroom today and he had an attitude because I did not come last week. I came to the school Tuesday and could not find the class to save my life or gas. I told him this and he wanted to know why I didn’t go to another classroom to ask the whereabouts his class. This is the same teacher who did not want me visit the other classroom with the students. I do not know what to think about this teacher.
I know it’s not right to have a favorite student but there is a young man named “L” that is my second child. I feel like L is really underestimated but because I don’t work with the lower functioning I can’t really prove it.
The teacher had gotten on my nerves because of his attitude about me not being there the week before really bothered me. Then “L” came in with the biggest smile when he saw me and all my aggravation went away especially when I got the same reaction from the rest of the class.
The paraprofessional worked with the lower functioning group as usual and then finished the number world work before the higher functioning group. He then had the students work on touch math. The students were really interested in the “touch math” probably because the teacher really likes it. If you want to see this teacher’s personality pull out touch math.
B. Today, I noticed that the teacher, myself, and the substitute who was there for one of the paraprofessionals all work with the 5 higher functioning students. While one paraprofessional worked with 3 students on 6 sheets of touch math. This is not fair to the paraprofessional and today I went and helped instead of trying to cause commotion. I don’t know if the para’s that work with the lower functioning students wants help or if this is a usual situation for them. But I felt better trying to help. The next period the teacher had one of his lower functioning classes.
Everyone in the class was doing touch math. But there were three students in the 3rd period who were doing something else.
On this day the young man “D” was in the classroom. I don’t know if you have seen the movie “SB” but he reminds me of the star of the movie. He is a young man that because of his size knows to how to manipulate to get out of what he does not want to do and to get what he wants. I saw a picture of him in first grade and the teacher told me at this time he was bigger than most but he had a structured environment. Academically he was low, but could do basic addition, now he is in 7th or 8th grade and tracing numbers and responding to pictures of numbers. What happened in between to his academic skills? I understand that he is bigger and that he is low but in this class the only time I have seen him do more than tracing numbers is when the site coach comes into the classroom.
The site coach had him counting numbers and he was very animated and was enjoying it. To watch him with the site coach and see their connection was inspiring. The problem is the site coach could only stay maybe 10-15 minutes as soon as he left he was back to tracing numbers.
I watched the interaction and wondered why the behavior change in “D” is because the site coach is a man? That can’t be it because his teacher is a man so what is it that made this young man decide to put forth some effort?
C. The teacher has touch math visuals on all the desks so they still count the dots to make the problems more concrete. In the Snell book on pg 516 there is a visual of touch math, the strategy of using the touch math to special needs children is promising. The problem is that if someone comes into the classroom that does not know this strategy who teaches it them? In the book it says that they have touch math for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division but it most be basic. I wonder if it includes complex problems for all the above areas. This strategy has helped the students in the classroom make major improvements and helped to build confidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment