Just some background info on my children. I am in a school in a poverty area. 99% of the school is on free or reduced lunch and the school is 100% African American. Most of my children live in single parent homes and go home to an empty house after school. The school district is good about making sure the children get everything they need for school and the teachers use a lot of their resources to encourage these children to stay in school.
I am going to start with today, because it fresh on my mind and there were several wonderful things that happened today! First, my day started off pretty rocky because my coaching teacher was in the room with me and was interrupting my teaching to correct, what she considered, discipline issues. With all of this interruption, my children were not given enough time to get their independent work done because the direct instruction took longer than planned. This is something I need to learn to live with as a teacher, since interruptions happen, but it was frustrating because I thought I was supposed to be solo teaching. Anyways, on a happier note: a wonderful success story about one of my little boys. The boy who is the lowest in my room out of 19 children (he's on a Pre- K reading level in 2nd grade) was recognizing high frequency words in text today as I read!! This is a child who is assumed to not be able to read or recognize letters and sounds, and he was finding words on every page of this teacher made book about his community that he could recognize and read!
To catch you up: My action research project is being implemented these next 2 weeks. I am doing my project about using a culturally relevant study to increase children's recognition and use of high frequency words. These are the words they need to be able to read, know the meaning of, and be able to use in their text.
So, as you can see....this is MAJOR that he could see these words on the page, point them out, and read them to me. I made sure to praise him and, man! If you could have seen his face light up! It was so great!!
Also, while I was reading, my kids kept getting closer and closer to me, raising their hands to tell me things that they could relate to about the text, and wanting to point out the words that they thought were important to them and to their writing. We are making a HUGE list of all the words we find in our readings that are high frequency words. This is so GREAT! I thought that I wouldn't see a change in my children, but I am already noticing changes in my children in 2 days! I feel really good about the difference I am having in their lives!
This is proof that when learning is meaningful to children, they learn more and absorb and remember more information...I must keep this in mind when I am a teacher. Meaningful lessons= meaningful learning!!
Now for Monday. Monday was a good day, I had the room to myself and my children were good. We had a visitor come in from the community to speak to them and they loved it and remembered a lot of information that he talked about. I felt really good. There wasn't too much to document yesterday since it was the beginning of the community study.
I hope that my children continue to change and grow and learn more and more everyday! I don't want to make this any longer, so I'm going to stop here...but I truly saw today that I have found my calling and why God has given all the traits and gifts that He has. I feel truly blessed to have all these opportunities to change so many lives for the better!
No comments:
Post a Comment