A School Day/Week

Monday and Wednesdays I tutor a student that has siblings that go to SCS, but he does not. He speaks Spanish (though I've been told he's fairly low), and I'm teaching him English. The 1st  semester I did a lot of paper/pencil vocabulary worksheets (which he actually likes doing). The last couple of months I've been doing a lot of bingo games with speech sounds-- and then asking/forming/answering questions/sentences. I've been trying to remember what the speech teacher's I've worked with have used, and use some of those type of activities. We do an activity and then he has a few minutes to watch these videos on Youtube that I found-- Dream English Kids-- Usually I leave there with having the songs in my head! LOL

Wednesday-- The other SST is gone the rest of the week (and possibly some of next week), having surgery, so I am helping out with her students. Two of her students are in my room taking a Math test, while I have my two students out in the hallway doing independent work and practicing fluency. They are given a passage on Tuesday (I don't see them on Monday's), and then every day they practice reading the passage for a minute, but continue reading the rest of the passage. Normally I'm the one that listens to them read, and marks the words. I decided to have them listen to each other, and mark if they missed any words. My students's thought it was fun to be in charge of the timer-- and also to be in the hallway-- something different I guess!

Thursday-- somewhat of a normal day-- though there are subs in 5th grade all week-- there is an exchange program in 5th grade with another magnet school in the Philadelphia area. Ten 5th graders are spending the week here, and then in April, several SCS 5th grader's are going there for the week. The exchange students go on field trips about every day, and one of the 5th grade teacher's is gone every day. Sometimes it makes communication a little fuzzy, especially with the student's b/c you don't always know what's going on!

Friday-- usually chaotic/busy normally, but with Arianny (SST) gone, I'm giving tests to her kids, so it's even more busy.
8:00-8:30--- Spelling/Phonics Test/1 minute Fluency/DIBELS --1 minute short vowel nonsense words/trying-to-get-them-out-the-door-but-they-like-to-chat-conversations (though they are a lot of fun to talk with).
The majority of the time, my  student's I have at 8:30 show up when I'm trying to finish up with them-- mostly b/c they are so chatty....
8:30ish-- 3 Student's show up for Bible Verse test-- I end up needing to print the Bible verse test and the reading test for them. I can't remember how long they stay, but one of them stays till 10:00ish (I think),  and has to come back during Study hall at 10;50 to finish, as well as take her spelling test.
8:45--  1 student shows up to take his Reading test. I read the test and questions aloud to him. I'm in the middle of reading the Reading test for my 3 student's (which I don't always need to read to them, but today I do), and thankfully his teacher's has a student teacher, so she takes him to do the test.
9:15-- Arianny's three student's show up to take their Reading test (they're in different classes/sections)-- they leave at 9;45, and one of them has to come back during study hall to finish.
9:30-  student shows up to do a Reading Assignment. The student wants to do the assignment with Ms. Siri-- she speaks fluent Spanish, and it helps him when she can clarify things in Spanish. I send him back down to class.
9;45ish-- student shows up for Bible Verse Quiz, spelling test, fluency (the room is actually empty then). She finishes, and then comes back to do the same Reading assignment. After doing the assignment, realize that the other student  needs an easier reading passage, so I print out an easier one from Reading A-Z.
10:50- student's come back to finish Reading Tests, Spelling Test, and Bible Verse Quiz
11:30ish-- Lunch- YAWAY-- I love their sandwiches-- they deliver to school!
12:15- 1:30ish student- Spelling/Reading Test, Math/Prefixes worksheet redo.
12:30ish-- Two students show up for Reading test-- thankfully MS Siri can take them for their test.
1:30- SST meeting with SST supervisor and para's. Chit Chat about SST stuff,
2:30- back to my room!! Finish planning for next week-- usually I start planning for the next week on Thursday's-- I have 3 student's that I do their spelling lists for-- and I use edhelper.com to type their lists -- and then have another student that I type out the words for, and uses the worksheets from Edhelper to practice the words. I have 5 student's that practice fluency every week, so I find passages for them on Reading A-Z. Two of the student's aren't able to use the Reading A-Z passages yet (too high), so I have Dolch passages I found for them. I have a new SST student now-- and they will require an alternate curriculum, so I also was starting to do some planning for them. 

It's been raining a lot this week, and Friday it rained all day--which seemed to add to the chaos (though I actually like the rain). I've been told that in February it does rain some, but not usually this much. 

I went to another swim meet today-- this time at Pucamaima-- which is part of the college here. It's and Olympic-size pool. I've watched swimming a lot on tv (mostly during the Olympics though)-- and it's been a lot of fun to see swimming live. Though I had to ask the security guard to tell the taxi people to explain where I was at -- Saying "Pucamaima, La Piscina" (pool) evidently isn't descriptive enough for them to know where I'm at! (I have a number that I call to get a taxi-- I've gotten pretty good at 'Necissito un taxi-- I need a taxi-- La Espinola/Thomas I (Uno)!) 

February Update

This week seems to have been exceptionally busy at school, but it hasn't been too stressful-- at least so far anyway. I haven't had as many of my usual breaks in the day (and out of the ordinary things that I usually work on), so it's made for a lot of last minute working on modifying tests/planning, etc. I usually know what I'm doing with my students everyday (unless I have interruptions or a student doesn't happen to show up--- my 5th grader's have the responsibility of coming on their own, and sometimes they forget...) , but if my students need something in-class-- a test modified, assignment, or to try to schedule a time to take the test(s), I may not know without much notice, so I've gotten pretty good at just "going with the flow...."  Today one of my 4th grader's took a S.S comparing the Midwest and the West (Southwest). They learn about all the regions of the U.S. It feels rather strange to be teaching/explaining about the U.S. when I'm living in a different country! But the kids also get Dominican Republic history-- I think in 4th and 5th grade (and I think upper grades as well). This morning I had another 4th grader that had both a Bible test on Solomon that she took at like 8:15 (after trying to help her teacher get the Science test printed for over an hour...), and then an open book Science test on electricity/lightening she took 30ish minutes later. Normally she wouldn't have taken both tests that close together, but with scheduling, sometimes it ends up being that way... 
The school has someone that does DIBELS testing for the students (1 minute fluency --reading a passage, and then retelling what they read)-- She uses a room that is close to mine-- so when she's here, I see her quite often-- She had to train some teachers how to administer DIBELS (and wasn't used to training teacher's how to do it), and though I hadn't planned on it, I helped her find some video's to show the teacher's, and sat in on the hourish training. 

I got a referral for a student few weeks ago, and was working with her teacher on starting some interventions with her (I love Explode the Code!... The student is working on reinforcing short vowels, along with what the class is doing)-- then last Wednesday met her parent's to sign for testing. She's an interesting case-- struggles with phonics/decoding (ELL also), and found out parent's took her to a neurologist and then did a sleep clinic-- she doesn't go into REM sleep, and therefore doesn't have good short term memory retrieval (I think that's the explanation anyway). Parent's are going to another dr for 2nd opinion--- looking to whether they want medication or not, b/c of side effects. I started testing her this week-- it's with an assessment that I wasn't familiar with, but wasn't too hard to administer. We give the Detroit Test of Learning Aptitude (DTLA), Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), and the Key Math-- and then I'll probably do some other informal tests as well. 

Besides her I have another student who's in 3rd grade that we signed on Monday to do testing with--I haven't started her yet... very low in reading comprehension and math, and really needs her own curriculum... doesn't have ELL services, but English Language Learner services wouldn't help her anyway. 

I still have several other students that I will most likely get referrals/permission to testing. We actually may have to close SST, and put the qualified SST students on a waiting list until next year, b/c between Arianny (the other SST teacher) and I, we just don't have enough time in our schedule to keep adding students. It has been really nice to be able to pull materials/resources that I brought back with me during Christmas. There are still times where I wish that I had other resources that are sitting in my parent's basement, but I know that I just have to make do--- or I have to try and find an electronic version.... :-) LOL

Last Saturday I watched one of my student's compete in a duathalon-- run/swim/run-- and she came in 1st. This was something separate from what she normally does-- and this was the first time that she's ever done a competition like this before. This weekend her classroom teacher and I are going to go one of her swim events. 

Tonight (Thursday) we have another Open House for parent's. As a sped teacher I'm used to not having parent's come see me, so it's usually a chance for me to catch up on things-- but by this time  of day my brain is fried... so I'm working on a blog post.... :-) 

The last few days (to me) it has felt warmer than it has been (upper 80's)-- I feel like I've been sweating during the day-- which hasn't been the case for several weeks (months)-- though I've been told that these days are just more warmer than usual--- it's usually not into the 90's until Aprilish. I've noticed at night that it hasn't been as cool, or when I wake up in the morning. Today it rained off and on during the day, which made it humid throughout the day.

Valentine's Day is celebrated here (they go all out for it, I'm told...), and tomorrow there will be a lot of classroom parties going on. The kids get to wear red, pink or purple shirts if they want, instead of their uniform shirts.