Reflections

I've been in school with students for about 3 weeks. Mid-terms are due next Monday! There has been so many changes already in the schedule! First, I decided that I couldn't fit in science and social studies every day, so I'm teaching science one week and social studies the next. I'm hoping my students will be able to retain the information, otherwise I might teach every other day or every other 2 days... My specials are driving me crazy! I have a whole class speech infused lesson on Tuesdays for 30 minutes, then on Fridays, we have OT, sensory time, music class (pull out) and gym! I had gym for the past 3 weeks on Wednesday, but the gym teacher (who also was an aide in my room) was offered a full time position teaching gym in several other schools in the county. He had to change my school's scheduled day for gym to fit the other schools' schedules. So now I'm down one aide- that will be replaced hopefully soon, as I have 3 students who are runners. Last week, I completed my math and reading placement assessments so this week I am starting to form the groups. There really weren't any big surprizes, as I could tell with my informal assessments where the students struggled or excelled.

I've also decided to begin a Daily 5 type of reading style. I think with my students this will help them. I'm still going to meet with groups of students to do a guided reading style of lesson. I will also schedule the rotations for them. We will probably only get through 3 rotations in a day- read to self, word work, and work with teacher. I also will have a work on writing and read to someone to rotate with the word work and work with teacher or read to self. I read to my students everyday after lunch, so I figure that's their listen to reading! They love the Humphrey books!

I also added a positive motivator, besides giving golden tickets for on task and ignoring others, if my students are safe for 3 days, they will get a prize from my prize box. I have various items like fun pencils, erasers, little notepads, toy cars, puzzles, basically anything that I can find that is under $1.00. I'm hoping this will motivate my one students who only has had 2 safe days since the beginning of school! He is a tough kid- and doesn't seem motivated by ANYTHING so far! 

So this week end has been some relaxing, a lot of thinking, researching through different blogs and pinterest (thanks to all of you) and printing, laminating,creating, and buying items for my room!