Week Five

This week my second grade students continued to do “research” on countries for a Social Studies unit.  The reason I put the word research in quotation marks is that most of these children can barely read, so they are not really doing their own research.  The Social Studies curriculum for this district no longer uses textbooks for grade two, but instead features a series of six-week inquiry-based units (alternating with science).  This sounds good in theory, but in practice with this group of students it does not work. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that some of these children can barely read.  Today I tested eight students on the Dolch pre-primer sight words (words to know before kindergarten).  Most of them appeared visibly stressed out by this quick assessment.  Only one student read all of the words.  One student read only twenty out of forty.  The rest were somewhere in the middle.  I know that my class contains mainly struggling reader and ELL students, and that is fine.  The point is that these children are incapable of doing the sort of research required by the curriculum because they cannot read well enough.  Even those on the higher end of the reading level range in my classroom cannot read well enough to perform independent research, even on kid-friendly websites like Scholastic or Nat Geo Kids.  My CT is required to do this unit (with some flexibility), which means that I am required to teach it.  Instead of actual inquiry-based learning, the research portions of this unit in our real life classroom consist of a teacher finding websites, locating pertinent information, reading it to students, and in most cases advising students exactly what to write down and how to spell it.

Admittedly, I do not know anything about curriculum.  I am sure this unit was written with the best of intentions.  There are limitations on how much can be modified; otherwise my CT certainly would have adapted it to better suit this group. The students have really enjoyed talking about the countries they are researching, including food, language, holidays, festivals, landscape, etc.  Some sort of modification for this class to make it less research-heavy would have been good.  In talking to my CT, a push-in ELL teacher, and a special ed aide, I came to realize that I was not alone in my feelings about this project.  I think this project would be a good challenge for a high-achieving second grade student or a third grader.  This experience makes me realize that a rigid curriculum can handcuff teachers who are trying to fulfill Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 1H, which states, “The competent teacher analyzes and uses student information to design instruction that meets the diverse needs of students and leads to ongoing growth and achievement.”

Unrelated to the Social Studies research, another phenomenon that I have been observing in my class has been the maintenance (or lack thereof) of the inside of students’ desks.  More than half of the desks are very messy, including a number of them that are a complete disaster.  These students can never find things in a timely manner and are frustrated by this.  When I see these children trying to manage the inside of their desks, my heart goes out to them because in them I see my daughter Maddy.  She is in third grade this year, and her desk is always a disaster.  She cannot manage to keep it clean and organized.  Since first grade, once a week or so she has had to clean out her desk, usually with the help of a friend.  She is a bright girl, and she knows how to do things like sort desk items into categories.  However, she struggles with some matters of executive function.  I am reading a book called Smart but Scattered by Dawson and Guare that is all about executive function, but it is slow going with all of my other responsibilities.  I am hoping that as I read this book, I will learn some strategies I can integrate at home and at school to help kids. In the mean time, I will continue to sympathize with the children with messy desks and help them clean and organize periodically.

I am feeling good about my recent teaching.  I am much more comfortable.  However, I am extremely nervous about next week and about the next month or so.  Next week I am adding Language Arts to my teaching load, so I will be starting to teach the whole day.  My CT is going to have a heavy hand in the planning for Language Arts next week.  Even though we are nearly a month into school, there are still a number of things that are up in the air with regard to reading interventions, ability grouping for guided reading, and similar items related to Language Arts.  My CT is extremely organized and hardworking, and not having the schedule 100% in place has been a source of extreme frustration for her.  I will get a better feel for this next week. 

In addition to being nervous and anxious about jumping into full day teaching, I have the same feelings toward completing my edTPA.  I have my video footage and my assessments, so I have all the raw material.  I just have to find the time to work on it.  There are not enough hours in the day.  With my four children, husband, full-time teaching starting next week, and the October 30 edTPA deadline looming, I feel overwhelmed.  However, I know that it can be done.  Now that I have all of my raw material for the edTPA I really just want to get it over with.

 

I am going to end this post on a positive note.  I absolutely love my class.  They are delightful children.  I love seeing them at unstructured times, like before school, after school, and at recess, and talking to them in a more casual way.  I love hearing about their lives and their families.  One little girl likes to quiz me on my Spanish to see how much vocabulary I know.  Today I explained to her what a tongue-twister is and I told her one in Spanish.  She just grinned from ear to ear.  Tomorrow the school district is having a walk-a-thon fundraiser for hurricane relief and I think I am going to go with some of my own kids.  I really and truly hope that some of my students are there.  I am also hoping to see some teachers from my school.  I cannot think of a person on staff there who has not been kind or welcoming to me.