Settling in...
Last week my post was about how I had finally started incorporating choice into the students' Daily 5 rounds with a rocky start. Well, I'm happy to say that we've seen some nice improvements. Yes, obviously, we aren't going to see perfection, which would be impossible, but I was really proud of what I've seen from my students as we increase the amount of choice this past week. The eventual goal is for me to be able to run small groups with students while the rest of the class is on task with their Daily 5 literacy activities (and Daily 3 math activities, which we've also been practicing). As of right now, I'm not running these small groups until the students are capable of independently managing themselves during our math and literacy times and I have collected more reading data to create the groups. I'm doing some individual reading testing next Tuesday, so I'll have a substitute in the classroom while I'm testing students (I imagine my first substitute experience of the year will be my next blog topic due to the different format of my classroom setup). But as of right now, it is really nice to have the students in their full format of Daily 5 and Daily 3 while not running groups so that I can monitor just how independent the students can be. With the variety of activities that are going on at once, there is obviously more opportunity for distraction. And this week we had plenty of distraction...
I have a couple of students who have some pretty strong cases of ADHD, and they have a tendency to feed off of each other. Their interactions, at times, can cause some heavy distractions for the rest of the students. But, as I said earlier, I'm really proud of how the students worked this week. A majority of the class was able to ignore these distractions and stick to what they were working on while some other staff members and I worked to remedy the heightened energy level. Not running groups at this time allows for me to interact with these students, but that is going to be much more challenging in a week or so when I start up my small groups...so the team I work with to support these students has been brainstorming ideas to help them be successful. Today was the best day of the week, so hopefully that is a sign of things to come. Tomorrow is a field trip, though, so that will be a whole different ball of wax to work with...I might have a lot to blog about next week. Time for bed so that I have energy for tomorrow :-)
Mindfulness thought of the week: Recognize the past, be aware of the future, but be in the present. I had a nice opportunity to help apply this with one of my students today. She had some negative experiences with another student in previous years and was worried that it was going to start up again this year. I pointed to the mindfulness thought on the board and we talked about what each part meant. Recognize the past: yes, you had negative experiences. These experiences can teach you about what this other student is like and help you to identify problems when they arise. But it doesn't say, "Dwell on the past."
Be aware of the future: things are going to happen; some that we like, and some that we don't. But we don't know what will happen, and we can't control what will happen (I pulled out the mindfulness thought from a couple weeks ago as a reminder). So there is no need to worry about something that we don't know will happen.
Be in the present: this was the key. I asked her if the problems that happened in the past were happening now; they aren't. Now is good, so let now be good.
I have a couple of students who have some pretty strong cases of ADHD, and they have a tendency to feed off of each other. Their interactions, at times, can cause some heavy distractions for the rest of the students. But, as I said earlier, I'm really proud of how the students worked this week. A majority of the class was able to ignore these distractions and stick to what they were working on while some other staff members and I worked to remedy the heightened energy level. Not running groups at this time allows for me to interact with these students, but that is going to be much more challenging in a week or so when I start up my small groups...so the team I work with to support these students has been brainstorming ideas to help them be successful. Today was the best day of the week, so hopefully that is a sign of things to come. Tomorrow is a field trip, though, so that will be a whole different ball of wax to work with...I might have a lot to blog about next week. Time for bed so that I have energy for tomorrow :-)
Mindfulness thought of the week: Recognize the past, be aware of the future, but be in the present. I had a nice opportunity to help apply this with one of my students today. She had some negative experiences with another student in previous years and was worried that it was going to start up again this year. I pointed to the mindfulness thought on the board and we talked about what each part meant. Recognize the past: yes, you had negative experiences. These experiences can teach you about what this other student is like and help you to identify problems when they arise. But it doesn't say, "Dwell on the past."
Be aware of the future: things are going to happen; some that we like, and some that we don't. But we don't know what will happen, and we can't control what will happen (I pulled out the mindfulness thought from a couple weeks ago as a reminder). So there is no need to worry about something that we don't know will happen.
Be in the present: this was the key. I asked her if the problems that happened in the past were happening now; they aren't. Now is good, so let now be good.
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