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.