Weekly Summary #6

Weekly Summary #6

February 19th-21st, 2019

Meghan Taylor

     By Thursday, the two kids that have not been absent the whole time, have finished working on short vowel 'a' CVC words.  We finished up the different endings for the words, reviewed them, and then they played a game together. I had found CVC tiles that had the beginning consonants and the common endings.  I would lay out the ending, such as 'ab, 'ag,' or 'at' and then say a word like 'cat.'  They would both have the same consonants in front of them, but they had to race to see who could form the word the fastest.  I had not planned for it to be a race for them, but they are very competitive and have fun doing this.  This kept them most engaged for the lesson more-so than at the beginning.  On Thursday, they both came over crying because one's throat was hurting and the other was tired.  They did not want to work for the life of them.  But, this game got them motivated and they seemingly forgot how tired and sick they were.  We definitely finished the lesson on a much better note than the way we started it.
     Next week, we will start and finish the short vowel 'e' CVC words.  The biggest trouble for the kiddos is when we work on their guided reading at the end of the lesson.  While they have become mainly fluent in the first book we started reading, now two weeks ago, the new books are a complete mess to say the least.  The one boy can sound out words,  but he chooses to guess on the words and not use his decoding skills when it comes to reading.  Even when they are the CVC words that I know he knows, when they are presented to him within a book format, it is as though he has forgotten everything that we just worked on and learned.  I want to find another way to present guided reading to them so they feel more motivated, engaged, and want to do it.
     In the CSS classroom, Tuesday was definitely fun.  There was only one para for the eight kids when we arrived.  She handed us a phonics book and told us to teach a lesson as a whole group.  Meanwhile, one student was trying to hide in the cubbies to avoid work, another was in the corner trying to sleep, and another was just causing chaos.  The whole group lesson was not a good idea from the start, as we should have broken into small groups, but the para told us that we were not allowed to for this phonics lesson.  (I am not sure why, but it was just better to do what she said).  It ended up going a lot smoother than I ever expected it to.  It ended up being a lot of fun, especially for the couple students that decided to cooperate and work on the lesson with us.  We usually do not run lessons like that, but I would not mind doing it in the future.  Overall, the four lessons that I have gotten to complete worked out way better than I could have imagined.  I am thankful for this peace amongst the chaos of everyday life.