My day started off with warm greetings from my students. It was evident that they were getting more and more comfortable with me and were happy to see me. As they filed in, I awaited my focus student to administer my assessments on him. He came in, and I pulled him to the back table.
The first assessment I administered was the letter sound fluency. Billy (pseudonym) got 21 out of the 26 possible correct answers in the time allotted. (One minute). He struggled to correctly pronounce the letters "l", "r," and "q." This is great information to have as now I know exactly which letters he struggles with. The second assessment was the Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation. This entailed Billy having to each sound in a word that I called. The assessment was completely oral. Though Billy's reading level is lower than he should be, he got every single word correct! This informed me that he is very good with his phonemes and does not need any more work with that. You can have truly seen how proud of himself he was, and it was the confidence he needed.
Earlier that day he had told me, "I'm supposed to read these basket of books because of my reading level, but I guess I'm better than I thought I was." I believe that Billy believing that he could only read a certain category of books may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I have learned in my Learning & Development course. He thought that he could not be a good reader because he was labeled as a low one. Thus, his self-esteem and self-concept are not what they should be. Thus, he may not have the best perception of himself when it comes to reading, nor may he positively evaluate components of himself. Should students be allowed to choose whatever book they want in the classroom, regardless of reading level?
After this, I corrected morning work with the class on the projector. Though this was my second time doing this, I still felt a little nervous, but once I got into it it seemed to be natural. I called on students to answer each question, and then at the end of the session, I had to choose two students who I thought shined. These two students were allowed to give themselves positive checks in their folders, which is a behavioral management strategy as learned in my learning and development course.
After lunch was math and science, my favorite! It was a class full of singing and dancing to learn how to skip count. Is integrating the arts in the classroom a more effective method of teaching than traditional methods? I assisted a lot with students' worksheets, and more and more they asked me questions just as much as they asked the other teacher. The day truly flew by as I was very involved.
One thing I have to work on is disciplining students. Perhaps I believe more in the "Praise and Ignore" strategy which is when teachers ignore inappropriate behaviors displayed by an individual while praising the appropriate behaviors of others. This is an interesting concept that I came across in my Educational Psychology textbook. Time would tell if this strategy is effective.