On Wednesday September 30th, 2015 we spent the day in The Learning Academy again. We started off the morning like any other morning with the morning procedures. It was a little different than usual because Ms. Swan asked me to check the students’ agendas for any notes from parents and give them their green star for good behavior the day before. I thought that this was a very cool idea because the piece of paper had 180 empty boxes on a piece of paper. The paper was then stapled into the kids’ agendas and each box stood for every day of the school year. When each student behaves the previous day, they get a star. It is a good incentive to get the students to behave during the day and they could even work towards a prize at the end of every 5 or 10 stars.
After we were done with morning work, Tia and I went and made copies of DIBELS fluency tests to give to our students to produce a running record. A running record is when the student reads a passage for a given amount of time and you record every word that they struggle with, words that the omit or add in, and words that they get correct. When I gave Jackson his DIBELS reading assessment it took him 2 minutes and 18 seconds to read the first paragraph.
I thought it went well because Jackson brought up a conversation with me after we were done rather than just heading back to his seat. I was using my cellphone to time how long it took him to read and it has a lime green Lifeproof case on it and he mentioned that his brother has the same case on me. I felt that this was important because it shows me that he is getting more comfortable with me and willing to share things about his personal life rather than just talk to me because it is necessary for my class. I did notice that when the entire classroom got quiet when he was reading, he stopped what he was doing and froze up. This leads me to believe that he is self-conscious when it comes to reading and doesn’t like when people listen to him.
The students practiced working with –ck, -ng, -nk, -a-e, -th, and floss word families today. They had to read a passage and then check each word and see if any words fell into one of the families in any way. If the word did, the students had to highlight it or circle the part of the word that is in the family in a specific color for each family. I thought that this was a good activity because it was something different for the students. The activity was colorful and let the students believe that they were doing something fun because they were using crayons and colored pencils. I also thought it was interesting that the teacher was allowed to play Christian music during class time. I know that in public schools you are not able to explicitly teach or talk/represent one faith and denomination more than the others but The Learning Academy is a private school.
It was a good day in the classroom because not only was I given the chance to work with Jackson but Ms. Swan asked us to work with another student in the classroom Max. She said that after the official testing day that they do in the beginning of the school year, she noticed that Max is struggling more than the other students. She asked us if we would be able to work on his fluency and reading comprehension with him in addition to our original students. I’m very excited for this because Max and Jackson are on different reading levels so this is going to give me an idea and real life experience as to what I need to do to reach all types of students.
To get to know Max more and what his opinions of school are, Tia and I gave Max a quick interview before we left and then we gave him the DIBELS test to start collecting data on him. It was also very creative on Tia’s part because she told him that he was now part of the Back Table Club. Max became very excited about this because even though we are working with him to help catch him up to the other students, we’re making it fun so he feels as if it’s something important and to work towards.
Max is an 11 year old boy that is in 4th grade. This is his 3rd year in 4th grade and he has been in 3 different schools for 4th grade. He went to a public school for the 1st year, and then was home schooled the 2nd year and when he came to The Learning Academy he started his 3rd year of 4th grade. He mentioned that he should be in 7th grade this year because he was also held back in preschool. His birthday is June 17th and he has 1 younger sister that is 8 years old. They have one dog at home named Jake. He described himself as fast, funny and good at soccer. His favorite color is green and his favorite book series is the Diary Of A Whimpy Kid. . When he is at school though, another favorite book series of his to read is The Hardy Boys. His favorite thing to do in his free time is draw 3D buildings and he’s drawn the Eiffel Tower and skylines before. His favorite subject in school is lunch and recess and if it is a rainy day at home the first thing he’ll do is play Minecraft with his friends or play on his phone. Max said he would rather stare at the ceiling than read a book for fun. Max said that when he was homeschooled his little sister went to public school and because he had so much free time he would create treasure maps for her when she was gone and hide a box of treasure out in their yard. Max said that his family owns 10 acres of blueberries and 12 acres of land so he would have a lot of room to hide the objects for his sister.