Since I promised Caitlin that I was going to update my blog, this is exactly what I am doing while on the bus.
I finished off the blog with James and decided that I should write about all my children.
I was to preface this by saying that I love my children, each and every one of them. They work very hard but sometimes I just want to strangle then in frustrations.
So like I mentioned before, I have 10 kids in my classroom. They are all entering the 4th grade so that puts them around 9 or 10. Some of the kids are older but most of them are around that age.
So the first person I want to talk about is bobby. Bobby is the single most influential thing in my entire classroom. I do not know what to do with him. He is just a very active child who understands the material and understands what he needs to do but the problem is that he is hyperactive. He has ADHD ,which makes it harder for him to sit still and not be a distraction in class. The days when I am able to handle bobby and get him to sit down, those are the days I feel am very successful. Some of the things that are unique about Bobby is that he has this obsession with pencils. He just wants to sharpen them 50 x a day and is always looking in his backpack for pencils. (side note: I hate pencils. Who would have thought that they are so annoying and distracting)
The next person is Josh. He is the only non-black in my class and it from Asian descent. He is the smartest person in the class and right now he is the most bored in class. I feel bad because he has to deal with all the disruptions in class and he knows everything on the math assessment. He has trouble reading but he knows what he needs to work on and tries very hard to stay engaged. Before last week, I honestly have not been challenging Josh. I felt that I needed to handle the struggling learners first and him later. What it ended up doing is that it ended up making him act up. It made him not stay focus and stop him from being great.
Now I feel like we have challenged Josh. I feel that we have made an effort to set up the rigor and make him feel invested. We got him thinking about the questions and what to do. I have Josh for my reading group and what I did once was told him to read ahead since he is a very fast reader and has good comprehension skills. This was also my mad day (I will make sure to write abt that later) so I did not feel like teaching. The good that it did was that I asked them what type of books he likes and what to do about it. So I switched books and then made him do more writing. That was my way of making things harder, that he needed to write about it.
So next is Shaniya. She right now has been my little princess in the class. She feels like she does not want to be in school and has already learned everything there is to know about the subject. But in fact, she is wrong. Big time. So I need to try to find a way to tell her that she needs to focus for these last two days of school. In general she is very middle of the barrel but this week has fallen to the bottom. We will see what she does tomorrow since one of the teachers talked to her mom today.
Next is Ja'Nya. It rhymes with Shaniya. (The names are spelled phonetically) She is one of the most loving little person i have met. She is always well dressed and ready to learn. She is reading on a 6th grade level and is super smart. I love her dearly and she is very invested in the class. She is always there to learn. The only problem is that she is always late to school (much like me after the 5th grade) but it is still frustrating.
I have spoken to you about James. I still do not know what to do with him and I hate the fact that he has this learned helplessness to him that is very annoying.
Jontia is next. Well I am not sure what to tell you about Jontia. The bad thing is that she likes talking bad about people which makes James, Bobby and Cedric angry and annoyed. But I have caught her several times so she does stop now. The cool thing about her is that she loves to read and write. She has such a good imagination that she loves learning and reading. She always takes books to go home with and always brings them back the very next day. Also she knows alot of words and even though she struggles in math and is alright in reading. She does try and I know that she will succeed with a good teacher.
Andrea and Jasmine are cousins. They are both in and out of my classroom because of absents so I am actually not sure if I will see Jasmine this week. I hope I will but I do not know. Andrea is this little thing but when you get her started she is a force to be dealt with. She is a natural leader and I am interested to see what she will do with this skill. I see her going both ways in life and I hope that she can stay motivated in something to push her through. She is ok in math and ok in reading. She reads really fast but her comprehension is pretty low so I am not sure what level she is in considering she was never tested in the beginning.
Jasmine on the other hand is very quiet. She would never really participate so it was very hard to get a read on her most of the time. She would sometimes get the objective but most of the time have issues with spelling or with some small thing in math. Since I have not seen her in a bit I cannot tell you more.
Now to my last two important little people. Terricco and Cedric. I have mixed reviews for them and I will fill you in tomorrow as I am going to bed.
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