This last week at Muldoon was a quiet one. I am preparing myself for the upcoming mini residency but am having some difficulties with it as we are shifting our reading and social studies to a program call "Christmas around the world", but it is not a curriculum but something the teachers do together. I hope that soon they will get together what they are doing so I can know what I am doing.
I did have one incident that I found troubling. When Mr. Foster was out of the class for training, I had some difficulties with the a child. Mr. Foster told me if the children are disrespectful and the parents need to be notified, he had slips for notes home to parents. I sent home one of these notes because of the child's behavior to let his father know what had happened. Mr. Foster told me that I should not have done this and should have left it to him as the parent was upset with me because his son said that it did not happen.
When I was told that I had done something wrong and that I put myself in a compromising position, I was confused since I only did what he told me to do. I guess I will need to ask for some clarification. This makes me wonder about everything I do now since I have been told my role and what I can do, then told I can't.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Okay, I have been really bad
I have not posted in a while.
School is going fairly well. The Walk into Reading we are doing has proven more difficult than I thought it would be. The children seem to be taking to the work, but I am not sure if they come out more confused sometimes because of examples they give which are vague or culturally irrelevant.
We did an assessment on the students in my WIR group and their reading ability has jumped to above their progress line for all but one. They use DIBELS which is supposed to rate children by their grade level in phonetic reading and determine where they are now and the goal of reading at the end of the year. All of my students in my WIR group were below the mark for the beginning of the year (otherwise at a third grade level), most being at a high first grade or low second grade level. The assessment showed that almost all of the kids are now at or above the beginning of the year third grade level.
While I find this exciting and knowing I am doing my job, I am also concerned because the children now have the ability to read, but lack the comprehension. The worksheets do not seem to bolster this. One example was the word "lamp" in which the example sentence for it was 'Mom lit the gas________.' They use other words like "sash" which only one child knew what it was.
When I brought this up, I was shown the scores and told that it was working. All that went through my head was the story of the two men who built their houses, one on a strong foundation and one on sand. We are building them a house, but I don't see a strong foundation for it to sustain itself.
After getting back from visiting my dad, Mr. Foster was in training so I was in the class with a substitute. Thursday and Friday was a difficult couple of days. The children were unruly and disruptive. We had a smaller class, but in reality, they were mostly the children who were "problem" children. They are "bad" children, but they are the ones that typically cause the problems in the class and did not qualify for Mediator training with Mr. Foster.
School is going fairly well. The Walk into Reading we are doing has proven more difficult than I thought it would be. The children seem to be taking to the work, but I am not sure if they come out more confused sometimes because of examples they give which are vague or culturally irrelevant.
We did an assessment on the students in my WIR group and their reading ability has jumped to above their progress line for all but one. They use DIBELS which is supposed to rate children by their grade level in phonetic reading and determine where they are now and the goal of reading at the end of the year. All of my students in my WIR group were below the mark for the beginning of the year (otherwise at a third grade level), most being at a high first grade or low second grade level. The assessment showed that almost all of the kids are now at or above the beginning of the year third grade level.
While I find this exciting and knowing I am doing my job, I am also concerned because the children now have the ability to read, but lack the comprehension. The worksheets do not seem to bolster this. One example was the word "lamp" in which the example sentence for it was 'Mom lit the gas________.' They use other words like "sash" which only one child knew what it was.
When I brought this up, I was shown the scores and told that it was working. All that went through my head was the story of the two men who built their houses, one on a strong foundation and one on sand. We are building them a house, but I don't see a strong foundation for it to sustain itself.
After getting back from visiting my dad, Mr. Foster was in training so I was in the class with a substitute. Thursday and Friday was a difficult couple of days. The children were unruly and disruptive. We had a smaller class, but in reality, they were mostly the children who were "problem" children. They are "bad" children, but they are the ones that typically cause the problems in the class and did not qualify for Mediator training with Mr. Foster.
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