Fine Motor

Many students struggle with handwriting. A great program to help students with poor handwriting and fine motor, is Handwriting Without Tears. This program ranges for students in grades K-5. This program helps encourage the development of handwriting. The program has many materials such as printing books, wood letters, chalkboards for printing, and many more great materials-check out the website! Our occupational therapist uses this program with several of her students. She also encourages teachers and parents to use the program during school and at home. This is a great program--I would definitely encourage you to check it out if you have already not used it in your classroom for students with poor fine motor and handwriting.

Destination Sucess

I went to a two day training this week on an excellent research-based program called Destination Success. The program does cost money (my district has purchased it) but it is well worth the money. The program is computer based instruction and practice. The program covers preK-12 reading and math instruction. You can search the curriculum by Scope and Sequence or by state standards. You can create lesson plans, generate tests, and progress monitor students. This tool is not just for students with special needs, it can be for students in general education too. Check it out and see what you think.

Food for Thought

Last Sunday at church, I was speaking with a retired teacher who taught 2nd grade for 30 years. She gave me some advice that I thought was beneficial to share with everyone--she told me to take time to truly enjoy my students. Often times we get so caught up in meeting standards and teaching content that we forget to take time to talk to our children and really get to know them. Of course we love them through the year and we can recite each child's academic strengths and weaknesses, but do we really know our children? I have tried to keep this advice with me this week and take time just to talk to my students about whatever. At the end of each day, I have felt more fulfilled and closeness to my students that I have never felt before. Try it if you can, I think you will find it very rewarding.

What a week...

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you look back and say, "how did I get through this week?!" Mine was like this. I had 3 IEPs this week on top of trying to balance schoolwork...whew! I made it and  am happy to report that one of the IEPs I held this week was of the student I reported about in another post who is struggling with math. Although we decided not to pull the student out of math, we have put her on a modified math curriculum. We use similar concepts like the class is working towards, but on this student's level. We have only been doing this for 2 days, but hopefully this will help this student be more successful. I will definitely update this student's progress in future blogs.

Interim Reports

Today interim reports went home--I cannot believe we have been in school 5 weeks! I am not a huge fan of giving students grades--does it truly reflect what a student knows or does not know? In all of the professional literature I have read lately about 21st century learners, it says we should be moving away from number grades and federally mandated testing. Instead we should be looking at students' collaborative and independent work as well as their competency of critical skills. I think this is great, but how do we convince parents that this is the future of education?

Last summer I read the book, The Global Achievement Gap, by Tony Wagner--I highly recommend this book to all educators. This book was very eye-opening in the facts that even America's best schools are really far behind many nations in math and science due to us not teaching key critical survival skills. What I found very interesting though was was a technical high school in California has been piloting a program where students do not receive grades or take federal mandated testing--instead they complete high stakes projects to move on to the next grade or graduate. Data that has been taken on the growth of these students' critical thinking skills as well as the other survival skills (see below) are colossal compared to an average school. Also, the dropout rate is much lower. Can we eventually move to this system without an uproar? I think it would be great, but it will be a long time coming before this happens.

The Seven Survival Skills of the 21st Century as defined in the book:

•Critical Thinking and Problem-solving

•Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence

•Agility and Adaptability

•Initiative and Entrepreneurialism

•Effective Oral and Written Communication

•Accessing and Analyzing Information

•Curiosity and Imagination

My Podcast- Adventure Reading

Follow along as we journey through the exciting adventure of reading! Check out my podcast for students with special needs, grades 4-6:

Co-Teaching

There are different forms of co-teaching in an inclusion classroom. See the diagrams below for the 6 types:

Working with upper elementary grades the forms of co-teaching that I use the most are: one teach, one drift, alternative teaching, and one teach, one observe. Of course, the goal of Inclusion is for the teacher groups to move to team teaching. Since this is only the second year of implementing this structure, I have not been able to do this form of co-teaching. Some of the teachers I work with are more open to this idea but some are  not. As my relationships develop with these teachers and we develop a trust between us, I foresee me doing more team teaching in the future. Do you have Inclusion in your school? If so, what forms of co-teaching are taking place?