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.