Friday, Day Nine

Today was frustrating. We retested the students yet again. My ST told me that some of the students are just trying me to see what they can get away with. He said that because some of them did not even number their papers, they only wrote the answers down. I understand that it is normal for a student to test a new teacher but I have other thoughts. I am wondering if we shouldn't reteach instead of retest. It seems that only one of the four have really grasped the concept and I hate to keep retesting if they just don't get it. I am going to speak to my ST about this idea.

One of these fourth graders is a real cut-up. There are times that he is disrupting the class he is cutting up so much. In our reading we discussed "Dealing with kids who feed off each other"(Fay & Funk, 1995). This is my token feeder. Once he gets on a roll, the other boys will follow. The option of moving to another class is probably not possible in this case. Divide and conquer is however an option worth looking into. Even though the room is small and their are only four students I think I can still make this work. Each student has their favorite place to sit or lay in the floor. That's how I could divide and conquer; by letting them not sit in their favorite places where he can disrupt the other students. But all students love the computer. That is good, but if they are not grasping what they need to pass this test, then perhaps I should shut down their computer time so they are not distracted (this is not the only class they have computer time in). Given that all of these students are EBD, I must tread lightly. I will speak to my ST and get his opinions on the separation of the jokester.

I assisted several students with AR testing today. One that really stuck in my mind was a fifth grader that was taking a practice quiz. He failed the quiz five times. At that point my ST told him to hold on and he would help him. It was my opinion that he should reread the book, but we will see what happened after school.

My third grader that is working with TOUCH math is doing better at recognizing his numbers. Something I have noticed when he writes he does it letter by letter. If the ST writes a word on the board and tells the students to write it down, this student has no concept of what he is writing. It is just letters to him. If you give him a hint and he has heard the word, he can tell you what it is. I really want to help this little guy and intend to find a way to do it.