Week 13

This week was my first week of full time teaching at this placement. It wen very well! Full time at this placement entails me teaching group, all 7 reading centers, and being in charge of the classroom in terms of where the paraprofessionals are going and what they are doing and the schedule for the day.

This week I taught two group lessons about "needs and wants". I used two different reading materials in order to help teach the students what a need is and what a want is. The book took us through different scenarios such as, "Jack has holes in his socks. He wants to buy a video game, but what do you think he needs? SOCKS!" This booklet was quite helpful for the students to have practice identifying needs and wants. I also did a SmartBoard activity where they had to circle the pictures that were needs and cross off the pictures that are wants. In addition to this, this week I taught reading centers to all seven students and came up with new ways of reaching their goals.

This week I learned that being the teacher role can be uncomfortable at times. I felt uncomfortable telling my paraprofessionals what to do during the day. The only thing that made it work okay was that my paraprofessionals like me and we have good rapport. They would tease me about my new role and call me "teacher". We laughed together about this new role and they encouraged me through it. I learned how important it really is to build that rapport as a teacher with your paraprofessionals. Another thing I learned was to never underestimate your student's abilities. The Speech Pathologist brought in the game headbands for the students to play. How this game works is the students strap a picture of an item to their forehead and the other students use describing words to help the student to guess what picture is strapped to his/her head. We brought in "peer buddies", who are 5th grade general education students from the school to come and play the game with them to model the game and behaviors. It went AWESOME! The students picked up on the game quickly and were using amazing describing words. The next day I was working with a student who always has difficulties with generalization in my reading center. This students goal is to be able to describe items. He loved the game headbands, so I bent the picture cards and put it on my forehead and had him play the game with me. It was basically the same thing we had been doing, but I had the picture on my head and we called it a game. The student did AMAZING! This was an awesome teaching moment for me!

Next week I hope to learn more about the various roles of my PT, OT, and Speech Pathologist. They come in teach week to our classroom and spend time with students. I want to watch them work with the students to learn more about how to best teach my students at the reading center. This week, I noticed that one of my students says the "s" sound whenever she needs to say the "sh" sound. I talked with the Speech Pathologist and I hope to learn what she is working on and transfer the same instruction to this student in my reading center.

Next week I will be full time again and I am planning my own field trip (community outing) with the students to practice "needs vs wants" in the community. I am excited to have the opportunity to plan my own field trip!