Focus: Special Needs
Year 4 has a few students with special needs in our class. A few have learning disabilities of some kind, and I've previously mentioned R, who has autism. Because of this week's focus, I tried to spend at least a few minutes just working with each of them.
Just after he called role, Mr. Barry pointed out to G, who has dyslexia, that she needed to get a laptop at the start of the day from now on because she would need it to do her micro-writing - a new provision on her IEP. Her reading level, interestingly, is at the top of the class, although her writing lags behind it. During micro-writing, I served as the scribe for A, which I have done in previous weeks as well. He has no trouble coming up with different ideas, but when he tries to write them himself, the physical task challenges him. He also proved that he understands the relevant rules of grammar when he read it back through. As his scribe, I had to leave out any capital letters, commas, speech marks (quotation marks) or full stops (periods) unless told to include them. When he read the sentences back to me, he would point out places that he needed these.
After they did micro-writing, it was time for micro-maths, a set of short word problems using basic arithmetic. I pulled I out to work one-on-one in the ICT (information and communication technology) suite because he wasn't getting along with the girls sitting near him. Originally from Bangladesh, his first language isn't English, which is why our teaching assistant Ms. Bryant is technically assigned to him. As soon as he was in a quieter setting, however, he was able to begin working with me and started to at least understand what was required in the task.
Guided reading followed micro-maths, so I took my group into the ICT suite to work. When they were done, we went back to class in time for their midmorning break.
After the break, the students worked on their Take One Picture stories. A little more than half the students worked on their stories on laptops, but since there weren't enough for everyone, I took a half students into the ICT suite, including G. I supervised and provided spelling assistance as they wrote. Aside from needing a bit more spelling assistance than her classmates, G didn't have any troubles with the assignment. Some of the students had a lot of ideas. M and V, for instance, each wrote more than the rest of the group combined. This didn't surprise me, considering that the two girls are at the top of the class for most things. Other students, particularly D, had much more trouble with their task. I'm not sure whether she was intimidated by other students who were further ahead or if her language barrier came into play (she speaks Polish at home), but she became increasingly frustrated and uninspired until lunch finally rolled around.
After lunch, the students had creative time until my dance lesson began. I found it was much more successful to give my initial instructions before we left the classroom, although their first instincts upon entering the hall was still to run around for a bit. They warmed up with the Brain Dance. Tentative at first, I found that once a few of the students started to engage with it, the rest of the class followed suit. Once they were warmed up, I led them through an exploration of positive and negative space. Mr. Barry and I had a wonderful time watching the students create crazy shapes together. After a twenty minute lesson, we had to go back to the classroom so that the Year 3 class could set up for their class assembly. They were so good during the dance lesson that Mr. Barry decided that they could have a little extra break time until assembly, which they loved.
At the end of the day, R's mother came in when she picked him up. She asked Mr. Barry about how R's week had been so far. Her visit signified the school's commitment to working with parents of children with special needs and to keeping them up-to-date regularly on their children's progress.
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