Monday, August 16, 1999
Today went really well. Most of the day I worked on running records – we needed to finish them up and get the set of books to [the other] Mrs. J. Most of the kids did really well and tried really hard. The few who did not do so well also gave up easily. We will have to figure out something to help them. Especially ER – she got 10% accuracy on a book that repeats simple 3-letter words.
I remember this girl. She was so low. I think (hope!) she was referred for testing. She could not remember things from one day to the next. At one point I was going through the phonics flashcards with her on a daily basis, since she didn’t know half of the letter-sound correlations. I remember she had a hard time with the digraphs, especially /ch/ and /sh/; she’d finally get it one day and be completely blank the next. And forget about it after the three-week Fall Break – she forgot everything she had learned! It was really frustrating.
We finished the health lesson from Friday – we still had 2 or 3 pages left in Chapter 2. It went much better today. I think part of it was because it’s Monday – they were better behaved overall all day today. And I also used some of the techniques Mrs. J suggested after the fiasco
on Friday. When we got to the question parts I said each person could answer only once (because the same 3 or 4 people raise their hand 3 times for one question). Also, and I think this one really helped, instead of saying, “Are you ready for page X?” I said, “Let’s go to page X now.” And it was great, they would all stop talking, go to the page and get ready to read! I was so pleased.
And well you should be, Young Institutrice. Don’t ask them what to do – tell them!
I told Mrs. J all the advice she has given me is almost word-for-word what the student teaching books says! We thought that was funny. I told her how I thought we should copy it (classroom mgmt) for the other teachers because they are always asking her how she does it!
I guess we were still getting along at this point. Well, it is only the sixth day. The semester is still young.
