Oh, my students and the things that they say. The best excuses usually come when they want to go to the bathroom, which they know very well they can't use but after breakfast and at lunch. Yet somehow their bladder manages to get to a bursting point in the middle of class, which always amazes me because they don't drink anything between breakfast and lunch. It's most definitely the biggest obstacle to classroom management, after pencil sharpening, that is.
I cannot believe I'm halfway done with teaching summer school. So much of my feelings are excited, but I cannot help feeling overwhelmed that I have less than two weeks to move my students an amazing distance to be ready for fourth grade - some of my students are finally just getting good at subtraction, but they still need to multiply and divide to be on grade level.
I did have a slight break through with one of my students this week. Shantrecia is probably the furthest behind at everything, except for oral reading fluency. I'm not entirely sure how she got above grade level on that and still is missing essential K-2 skills. Like subtraction , for instance. Most of my students still count of their fingers, but at least they're counting on their fingers correctly. Shantrecia uses her fingers, but I'm not really sure what she's doing when she does because she still doesn't get the problem right. My FA has taken over working with her in our morning AIH time and made her subtraction flashcards that she never wants to put down anymore. Even though she's so behind, I think she responds well to having these flashcards because no one else gets them. Reading is what is presenting the biggest challenge, however. Give her a passage to read, and she can bust it out with expression, no mistakes, and quite quickly. However, ask her to tell you anything about what she just read, and I get blank stares. Nothing. I will give her the answer and then ask her the question again, and still nothing. She's a bright girl, and very well behaved, so she's not being defiant. My CMA suggested that I give her a specific question written on a post-it note to think about while we're reading, with the understanding that I'll be asking her that question when we conclude reading. I did that on Wednesday - I gave her the question "what is one main idea from the story we read today?" I explained to her what I wanted to hear with the question, and went over what a main idea is. And you know what, when we finished, I asked her that question and after one answer that wasn't quite on point, she gave another that was entirely correct! I almost jumped out of my seat because this is the first time that I have seen her comprehend anything she's read. You could tell she was pretty excited that she got this answer right. I kept referencing her answer through the read of AIH time (so let's remember the main idea that Shantrecia told us early; so how does that connect with the main idea Shantrecia told us earlier?) and the rest of the day I could really see an improvement in her confidence level. Of course, being the naive new teacher I am, I figured I had cracked her code and this post-it note method was the answer to all her comprehension problems. Not quite so. I tried this method again on Thursday, this time with a harder question - "what was the problem of the story we read today?" and I got blank stares again, even when I told her the answer, she still couldn't give it back to me. However, when I gave her sticky note at the beginning she was really excited and told me, "oh yes, my question!" I think I might have just gotten ahead of myself by pushing her to try to identify the problem of the story before she really had a grasp on the main idea. I'm going to stick with the main idea next week until I'm sure she has a grasp on it. Her confidence, though, has improved drastically since I started trying new methods of helping her to learn. Even when she's completely lost in class, she quietly works with the boy who sits next to her to understand it, then when it's independent work, she calls me over to help her. Her grades on the end of lesson assessments have gotten drastically better over the past week. Shantrecia still has a long way to go, but she's come so far in less than two weeks, I cannot wait to see where she is at the end.
We have the 4th of July off, so this is an exciting long weekend here in Cleveland. My roommate and I went to Memphis for the day yesterday just to get out of here. It's only two hours away and we needed to see real stores and have something to do that's non-TFA related. It was quite a success, and a great break. We spent a few hours at the Civil Rights Museum and the site of MLK's assassination. The majority of our day was spent at the mall, just so we could be in a mall again. I barely even bought anything, but having the opportunity to was quite wonderful. I was able to purchase a clipboard, which was probably the most exciting part of the day. I've been trying to get one since I got here (I really wasn't aware how much more effective your teaching can be with a simple piece of wood and metal clip) but Wal-Mart was sold out within hours of TFA descending on Cleveland and there is not a single other place in Cleveland that sells clipboards (yes, we asked). Oh, and the next closest place that sells them? A teacher supplies story an hour away. All I have to say is good luck to the TFA teachers placed in this area!
Tonight the whole town of Cleveland is throwing us a 4th of July party, complete with fireworks and flesh-eating mosquitoes. It seriously amazes me how much of a big deal it is to them that we're here for the summer. Our welcome party was a ton of fun, so I'm really looking forward to tonight.
