Every day we teach our unit, we are required to write a reflection. I thought I'd share today's with whoever is interested, partly so that you can get a glimpse of something that monopolizes much of my brain and heart, teaching, and because I haven't really blogged in a while. I was so good in October!
Today, I taught about theme, and it went well. I was concerned that because they had never heard of theme before, and it was a more abstract literary element, they would struggle to understand it, but we went over how it is inferred rather than found in the pages, and discussed some of the themes of Stone Fox. I think what also helped was that I didn’t just tell them what it was, I modeled how to find it and gave them some practice by reading The Tortoise and the Hare and then having a class discussion on the themes in that fable. I will continue to review the different literary elements, including theme, so that the repetition helps the concepts sink in.
After Read to Self time, when the students were at recess, Mrs. Cloud approached me and told me that she had read with one of the students who has a learning disability, and that when she asked him to read out loud, he really struggled with a lot of the words and wasn’t getting the meaning because of this. She suggested that the next time I use one book for the whole class, I make extra modifications to assist students like him, such as having a listening station where he and other students who are struggling could listen to the book on CD while reading it. This way they would be getting the meaning of the story; they would not be held back by their reading skills. This student’s role assignment was “Super Summarizer,” so I spent extra time with him rereading the chapter out loud and engaging him in discussion at various points. He seemed to be doing well. When we were done with the chapter, I asked him how we should start his summary and he began with an event that had taken place more in the middle of the chapter, so we turned back to the beginning and I told him he needed to start with the first event. He began writing a sentence about this and I walked away to help other students who were working on their roles. About 5 minutes later I came back and he hadn’t even finished the first sentence.
It’s really discouraging when students don’t get it. On my way home, I thought about Jesus’ parable about the shepherd who left his 99 sheep to find the 1 lost one. When teaching, it is so easy to forget about the 1 student who is silently lost. The ones who voice their opinion and say, “I don’t get it!” are easy to spot, but students like this pretend they are doing fine, maybe because they have accepted not comprehending text for so long it seems normal, and it’s not until you assess them that the truth is revealed. I’m not sure how teachers help students like this do their work and be more responsible at the same time. If I wasn’t by his side, he may not get his work done, but being by his side all the time makes him dependent on me, not himself. I know I need to learn more about modifications that are made for exceptional learners. I don’t want to forget about the 1 (or 2 or 3 or more) lost sheep.
.JPG)
