St. Andrew's Visit 2: A Pupil's Pursuit

Focus: A Student Pursuit - "to focus on the range of learning experiences/activities which the school provides for one particular student on one particular day"

Year 4 Schedule:

9:00 - Micro-writing

9:30 - Literacy

10:00 - Numeracy

10:45 - Break

11:00 - Take One Picture

12:15 - Lunch

1:15 - Creative Time

For my main focus, I chose to keep an eye on D as she traveled through her day. During my visit, it was D's turn to have a "special day," which meant she was basically Mr. Barry's helper throughout the day. Everyday, the special day goes to the next student alphabetically, and that student lends a hand with supplies, handing in the roll call for the day, and more. Aside from that, the student participates in the day like normal.

D's day started with micro-writing. She sat with her classmates as they talked through a picture posted on the board and contributed to three sentences - one description, one action, and one speech - about the scene depicted. They then wrote their own sentences independently while Mr. Barry and I walked around, providing support as students needed. I spent a few minutes writing for Arthur, whose handwriting is so illegible that he has permission to use a computer or to dictate his writing to someone else. He had to remember to tell me where capital letters, full stops, and other punctuation marks needed to go.

Next, the class separated into their level-based reading groups. I took D's group, which was on the low end of the class, to the small school library across the hall, where they read a short story and together and answered questions about it. It was easy to see that even within this group, there was a difference in the abilities of different students. While some students had caught on quickly to the story, others needed to look back at the story and reread a few sentences to answer the questions,

When we finished our story, we rejoined the class for maths. Because they had had assessments during my first week, this was the first time I got to see how the numeracy strategy is implemented in England. The students sat back on the carpet to learn about multiplication and relate it back to addition. They followed the same process for division and subtraction. Mr. Barry presented an example and then assigned 4 numbers of increasing difficulty for the students to do in their workbooks. D got a bit distracted during this and spent about as much time socializing as doing her work, but she got back on track with a bit of guidance and finished the second of the four numbers just in time for the break. While the students went outside, Mr. Barry explained the marking system to me, and together we marked their workbooks.

After the break, the students worked in pairs with their neighbors. D and her partner had no trouble finding the image for "Take One Picture," which they discussed animatedly. She excitedly formed a trio with two friends for the plays they began to create outside on the playground. I discovered as I supervised that D and her friends are part of a large number of students in the school for whom English is a Second Language. In their case, Polish was the language of choice as they prepared their play until lunch time.

Lunch was followed by creative time, which D's group used to create costumes for their play. They remained inside for much of the afternoon, as did students creating puppets of the characters in the painting, while I took other students outside to practice their plays so they could present them to the class the next day. For a bit, I had M, J, and V, who are three of the highest achieving students in the class, working on their play outside. Other groups followed their lead and came out as well, staking their claim to sections of the blacktop to rehearse. However, it suddenly began hailing in the middle of the afternoon, so we sprinted back inside to avoid getting drenched. The students succeeded in this endeavor - I, however, got fairly wet trying to make sure that all of the students made it inside. Once it stopped, the sky cleared in just a few minutes and I took RR and M outside.

A few minutes after the girls had come out, R and his group joined us. They initially made a beeline for the same basketball hoop the girls were using. I tried to intervene and redirect the boys to a different area, which worked for R's partners, but R would not be swayed. He latched onto the hoop and lashed out when anyone tried to persuade him to release it, so another teacher came over to lend a hand while I ushered the girls away. They became understandably upset, having committed no offence. Unfortunately, even with the assistance of the other teacher, we were unable to convince R to release the hoop until the whole group went back into the classroom. While he returned, I stayed in the hallway with the two girls for a few minutes, allowing them to express their frustrations and explaining why I had made the choices I had. They took the time to collect themselves and calm down a bit before we joined the rest of the class for the end-of-the-day announcements.

After the day ended, Mr. Barry and I reviewed the sequence of events from the playground. He explained that R has autism, which was why he had struggled with not getting what he had anticipated. I then asked whether R had a behavioral plan (which a student like him would have in the US) or some kind of British equivalent. Mr. Barry was very forthcoming in explaining the usual plan of action with R, which focuses on social stories and emotion coaching. He also described the evolution of the plan, which I thought was interesting. Until recently, R's outbursts had been dismissed as poor behavior, for which he was sent out of the class. Although this was an easier way to work with him, it was also more frustrating, because his behavior never changed. The new plan, requiring much more energy from the teachers, has shown noticeable results. Outbursts such as the one I encountered have become less frequent, which has allowed him to spend more time in the classroom.