// The Focus Student Scoop \\

**Example of Neville’s writing.**

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Recently, I have been gathering information on a student in my class. His name is Neville and I found certain qualities about him very interesting. He is in fifth grade and he loves telling stories and doodling. However, his love of story telling isn’t reflected in his reading and writing grade. His mid-year grade reflected an F in the category of reading and writing, and I found that interesting since his History and Science grades were such high As.

After informing Madam Hooch that I was interesting in Neville’s academic performance, she started providing me with information on his home life. She told me that his mother was an active parent in his education, and was easy to get in contact when necessary. She also informed me that Neville and another child was involved with a bullying situation. This situation had been going on since third grade, and when the school became involved to determine a solution, each student told a different story. They both explained that the opposing student was the one bullying. With the information that the school had, they came up with a suitable solution. However, when observing I noticed that he mentioned to his friends that nothing was done and that he would have to take care of it himself. Additionally, when I asked Neville a few questions, he automatically assumed that I was going to ask him about the bully situation, almost as if to offer this information proudly. When I informed him that that wasn’t the case, he didn’t say anything else about it. The only other questionable behavior that Neville displays is his gruesome twist on every answer he provides. I have heard how much he enjoys the TV show The Walking Dead and how much he enjoys Halloween, however I have never seen Neville display any aggressive behaviors so he couldn’t have a conduct disorder.

After asking Neville a few general questions, I found out that his father was a truck driver and his mother had two jobs–working in coat factory and working at a museum. I also found that he likes video games such as Call of Duty and Minecraft, his favorite subject is history, and along with other various pieces of general information. Additionally, I asked Neville how he learns best, and his response was that he likes to be active. From this I would think that his intelligence type developed by Howard Gardener is bodily-kinesthetic. All of this general information didn’t provide me with any indication as to why he was struggling in reading and writing though.

It wasn’t until I started gauging his demeanor and behavior in case when things started coming together. During writing or reading, in the beginning of the year, he would often ask Madam Hooch if he could go to the nurse because he didn’t feel well. Soon Madam Hooch caught on to this excuse, and stopped it. Also, I noticed that almost every day I was in the classroom, he had to work on the computer software “IStation”. When I asked Madam Hooch what this was, she informed me that IStation is for students who are below level in reading. They work on this program to practice reading skills such as comprehension. I found this very interesting and thought this was relevant information in my wonderings. Additionally, at the end of every Thursday at Hogwarts Elementary, students break off into their specific RTI (response to intervention) groups. I saw that Neville always left and when I asked Madam Hooch what Tier he was in, she said he was in Tier 1 (which is the level that requires individual one-on-one help). So not only does Neville receive assistance in reading through IStation, but also through RTI.

The only data that I’ve gathered so far about his writing, was his actual pieces of work. One time I was grading one of the class’ assignments, I came across Neville’s paper, and after trying to decode his answers for almost five minutes, I finally asked Madam Hooch what she wanted me to do. After seeing his paper, Madam Hooch returned a blank paper to Neville and asked him to redo it. Throughout almost every paper that I have seen Neville write, his writing almost appears as though it belongs to an emergent literate student. His writing shows signs of this because he doesn’t have spaces between some words and his spelling patterns are similar to students that are in the emergent stage. When I talk to Neville, he doesn’t show any signs of delay and if I hadn’t of known any better I would have assumed he was an excellent writer from the stories he tells.

After finding all of this out I found that it was imperative that I see what kind of scores Neville had received on his standardized testing that would require such extra help. When viewing his scores, I knew immediately why exactly he was receiving all of this assistance. Last year his first test scores–taken in the beginning of the year–indicated that he was in the 12th percentile for reading comprehension. In the end of the year, his test scores showed that he did make progression, however, it was still a worrying number. He had scored in the 35th percentile.

I’m still not sure what is causing Neville to struggle so much in reading and writing, which drives my determination to help him. I continue to seek an answer to this wondering and hope to break the silence of his struggle.

Reflective Questions:
1. How can I help Neville improve his reading and writing skills?
2. What can be done about the gruesome answers, and is it a problem?

// Teaching Reflection \\

When you are observing a lesson or another teacher, it is really easy to just pass judgement on all of the things that they are doing wrong and say what you would do instead; however, it isn’t until you physically take on the task of teaching when you truly understand the challenges that are involved with teaching. On October 8th, I taught a small group of six a math lesson. The lesson was centered around the strategy draw a diagram, the students would then use this strategy to solve word problems, more specifically division word problems. Before hand, I had my entire lesson planned out and I felt confident about the material that I was going to cover. I even included a hands on visual for the students to use involving food. Once my collaborating teacher was splitting up the class for the math lesson, she decided to give me the students that struggled with the homework from the previous night, rather than the students I had lesson planned for. She also told me to go over any homework problems they had before starting the lesson–which I hadn’t planned on doing before either. At first, I thought I would be fine and all would still go as planned. When my small group and I sat down in the library, I decided that I would go over a few homework problems that they struggled with before recording my actual lesson. I realized that this was a larger task than I initially thought because almost every student in the small group got every question wrong. After going over two long division problems in depth, I looked at the clock and saw I only had twenty minutes before lunch. The realization that I would definitely not finish my lesson, made me panic. Even though I really wanted to assist these students with their questions, I had to teach my lesson.

When I was teaching my lesson I felt a bit flustered and rushed because of time restraints. I felt that I wasn’t making myself clear. Additionally, I think because I deviated from my CT’s math routine, the students didn’t understand the process I was trying to explain. My CT doesn’t teach math using “I do, We do, You do”, instead the class all works together along with her. Next time, I might try to more closely match the lesson routine that my CT does so the students know exactly what to do. Also, I’m not really sure why the students weren’t writing anything down because I think that they normally do in class. So next time, I might emphasize writing notes by writing on a white board or an ELMO. In addition, I also was really discouraged when I saw that the young man in the back literally wasn’t even paying attention. He was writing something on his write board. The only thing I could make out was, “I stink at…” I couldn’t read everything he had written, but regardless, it truly makes me upset when I see or hear a student say they stink at something. I feel like he may have thought this because I wasn’t able to fully explain his homework to him because I had to do my lesson. Next time I will ask my CT if she would like me to do a reteach lesson for struggling students. Conversely, I felt as though the two girls on my right and the girl sitting right beside me, understood the method that I was trying to teach. One of those girls actually made a connection though the explanation saying, “I think we did something like this last year”. Also while teaching, I was trying to include all of the students, but after watching the video, I noticed that many of them weren’t really paying attention. I am going to reflect upon various ways that I can include all of the students and have them actively engaged throughout the lesson without embarrassing them.

Before I had even watched myself teach, I felt a little bit like a failure because I didn’t even get half way through the lesson. When I discussed this with my CT, she was explaining to me that that’s what happens sometimes when teaching. You have to be flexible because most of the time things aren’t going to go as planned. She also mentioned that review is all a part of lesson planning, so even though I spent more time reviewing than I initially planned for, it wasn’t in vain. I think that the next time I do a lesson that requires a review of previous information, I will definitely include it in my recording.

After I watched the video, I was actually surprised with my demeanor and articulation throughout the explanations. As I had said, I thought that I felt rushed and flustered, but when I watched myself, I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. Also, I felt as though I articulated the material I was trying to cover well even with the time constraint on my mind. I think that the hands on activity that I was going to have the students do would have worked really well because when I was using the gold fish to demonstrate the strategy I felt as though they were paying attention and as soon as I poured each student fish, many of them seemed to perk up.

Having the ability to reflect using a video was a lot more useful than I initially thought. I actually gained a lot of understanding and knowledge through watching the video. I would like to teach the class another math lesson because I would really like to see how it would go when I can plan better to get all the way through the lesson. I would even like to do a reteach because I think that a lot of students in that class may struggle with math and I never want to see a student get left behind.

When I was teaching my lesson I felt a bit flustered and rushed because of time restraints. I felt that I wasn’t making myself clear. Additionally, I think because I deviated from my CT’s math routine, the students didn’t understand the process I was trying to explain. My CT doesn’t teach math using “I do, We do, You do”, instead the class all works together along with her. Next time, I might try to more closely match the lesson routine that my CT does so the students know exactly what to do. I’m not really sure why the students weren’t writing anything down because I think that they normally do in class. In addition, I also was really discouraged when I saw that the young man in the back literally wasn’t even paying attention. He was writing on his write board something like “I stink at…” I couldn’t read everything he had written, but regardless, it truly makes me upset when I see or hear a student say they stink at something. I feel like he may have  thought this because I wasn’t able to fully explain his homework to him because I had to do my lesson. However, I felt as though the two girls on my right and the girl sitting right understood the method that I was trying to teach. One of those girls actually made a connection though the explanation saying, “I think we did something like this last year”. Also while teaching, I was trying to include all of the students, but after watching the video, I noticed that many of them weren’t really paying attention. I am going to reflect upon various ways that I can include all of the students and have them actively engaged throughout the lesson.

Before I had even watched myself teach, I felt a little bit like a failure because I didn’t even get half way through the lesson. When I discussed this with my CT, she was explaining to me that that’s what happens sometimes when teaching. You have to be flexible because most of the time things aren’t going to go as planned. She also mentioned that review is all apart of lesson planning, so even though I spend more time than I initially planned reviewing, it wasn’t in vain. I think that next time I do a lesson that involves review, I will definitely include it in my recording. After I watched the video, I was actually surprised with my demeanor and articulation throughout the explanations. As I had said, I thought that I felt rushed and flustered, but when I watched myself, I didn’t look as flustered as I felt. Also, I felt as though I articulated the material I was trying to cover well even with the time constraint on my mind. I think that the hands on activity that I was going to have the students do would have worked really well because when I was using the gold fish to demonstrate the strategy I felt as though they were paying attention and as soon as I poured each student fish, many of them seemed to perk up.

Having the ability to reflect using a video was a lot more useful than I initially thought. I actually gained a lot of understanding and knowledge through watching the video. Next time I would like to teach the class another math lesson because I would really like to see how it would go when I can plan better to get all the way through. I would even like to do a reteach because I think that a lot of students in that class may struggle with math and I never want to see a student get left behind.