Day 6

Today was a great day. We went to the reading group and were able to sit and work with the students on their spelling and writing. They had words they had to write, but when there was extra time, the students came to me and we talked about their favorite toy. After they told me what it was, we sounded it out and they wrote it on their paper. They were excited to talk about their toy, but they were also learning. Our one child with an IEP in the classroom greatly surprised me today. We were talking about his favorite toy (baseball and baseball bat) and he was showing me what exactly to do. I had to refocus his attention, but once I did we talked about the other components (glove, bases, etc). I asked him how he thought we spelled baseball and he just wrote it perfectly. Coming from a 5 year old, I was pleasantly surprised. I asked if he wanted to sit down and write more and without question he walked over to his chair and wrote all the words he could think of and spelled them perfectly. He is obviously very smart and in order to keep him focused the teacher will really have to work on keeping his mind engaged. If not he finds plenty of other things to do to keep him preoccupied!

Like in Love and Logic, Chapter 5, in order to calm the group, I had to get the main interrupting child away or focusing on something else. This allowed him to work beside me, and in his mind do something very important. But with this, I was able to focus on the other children whose attention was taken by the loudest child.