Journal for 10-18 to 10-20

10-18
Student and I are in full swing of our new routine. She seems to handle everything well until around thirty minutes before school gets out. At that point, she becomes over stimulated, giddy, and unable to complete work in a timely manner. It makes sense to just to call it quits for the day rather than push her too hard because I want her to like coming to school. We got a lot done today, but we have such a limited amount of time. I hope to extend her work time every day so that we could work until the very end, but for now, I am happy where we are.

10-19
I love manipulatives. I was having such a hard time today trying to teach her subtraction, but using toy bears worked wonders. I highly recommend them. Nothing really new today, but still looking to extend our work time every day. I will update later.

10-20
Today, we worked hard on social skills and interactions with others. Student and I walked around the school and tried sitting in on the whole class time which turned out to be longer than I thought before we began distracting too many people. I am tired of just going over academics and needed to mix it up. These kids need as much exposure to others as possible so that they can become more independent.

Journal for 10-10 to 10-12

10-10

Today we have started focusing more on completing IEP goals in different ways. I have started using manipulatives more often and using worksheets just a little less. I don't want to get lost in worksheets and data sheets, but the amount my teacher wants me to assess my student makes it feel like all I may ever do is enter data. At the end of the day, I felt like my student did well despite the change in lessons and routine. I hope that she shows as much flexibility during the following days.

10-11

I had a hard time with my student today. We think shes having "girl" problems and doesn't fully understand whats going on. I haven't found myself in a situation before, but I don't really know what to do or how to handle it. I can be understanding and flexible with my plan, but what do you tell someone that doesn't understand what your saying unless you use three word sentences? How do you teach this population sex education? How do you prepare them for the changes that they will go through?

10-12
My girl didn't ride the bus today, so I had time in the classroom! Woohoo! I worked on classroom management like there's no tomorrow and it felt good to stretch my legs. I had a kid go into crisis mode when he didn't want to read the book that we were reading as a group, which made me super happy to have an awesome fellow staff that helped with self regulation. I feel like a bunch of these kids should have behavior support plan or at least some goals that are related to behavior management but many of them don't.

They say I Say 1 and 2

The main points that I took away from the reading of section 1 and 2 of They Say I Say were many. I am still learning a great deal about writing in general and appreciate the things that this book is showing me. I have learned that its important to create a context for your argument, or to communicate the big picture and how your argument plays a part. It's also important to know how the context responds to your argument. Creating an order or process to your arguments and the points you're trying to make can help. I may have pointed this out before, but I love how the text gives tons of examples of what you can insert into your text to communicate your argument in a more effective manner. Always make sure that you compare your ideas with others. To do this, you can create a dialogue. By creating this dialogue, you can use a little time to summarize others ideas so that they can fit your agenda and can be used to support your claim. By using others thoughts, you can be led to quote a great deal, which can benefit or be detrimental to your idea. Too much quoting can lead to less of your own work, which can seem like you don't see much merit in your own thoughts but too little can show little support for your ideas. When you do use quotes, make sure that they are framed in the text properly and not merely tossed in to fill space. Make sure the quotes you use are relevant to the sections they fall into. In chapter four, I love how simplification is important when you respond to someones ideas. Either saying “I agree because. . .” or “I disagree because. . .” is enough. 

Journal for 10-4 through 10-6

10-4
My student and I are in full swing. Shes still coming everyday and we have finally been going to PE with the rest of the class and actually staying at lunch. Now, I need to focus on keeping her "in the zone" and focused without frustrating her or getting her escalated. Once I can get her focused for longer than five to ten minutes, I can start getting base line data on her IEP goals. This is hard enough with one student. I hope I can handle a class load.

10-5
My student didn't come today because she was sick, but this gave me plenty of time to prepare my materials I need for probing and assessing. I also had a good amount of time in the classroom today which put my mind at ease, getting more practice. It's easy once you have been up there for at least one subject. That got me thinking about how I can be an effective teacher and still find the time to do all the case managing.

10-6
Today we started going through the process of getting data so that I could create a basal for my student. She started getting stressed out every time we would work for more than ten minutes. This meant that we could only get so much work done, and she got frustrated when she didn't know an answer to a question. I will have to find a way to make it more interesting and help her regulate herself so as to get more time and have less frustration.

Journal for 9-26 to 9-29

9-26
As the routine with my student becomes more fluid and frequent, I have had to come up with ways to keep her focused on different lessons and activities. I will probably base my research around this, but she has a hard time with transitions, being around large groups, and loud noises. I am trying to use a reward system based off of a token board that provides frequent breaks. I hope it goes well.

9-27
So it seems that she needs to work for somewhere between five and seven minutes until she loses interest. Today, I made sure to keep working on things just to keep her busy and to see how long she would repeat the work then break process. She made it for about half the day and then had a hard time with self-regulation. She just got to excited. I still didn't have any luck getting her out of the classroom and down to PE today but will try again tomorrow.

9-28
Today I was able to keep her working for about an hour longer than yesterday. I don't know if it was a fluke but she responded well to the process. I suppose my question of the day would be "How much does daily routine add to her stress and performance in our lessons?" I plan to keep trying to motivate her to leave the classroom for parts of the day, either during walks or going to outside classes.

9-29
Finally got her out of the classroom! Went for a walk in the building. it was very exciting! She had good day working. Still hoping to extend our daily work time, which was pretty short today. Maybe if I get her on a walk in the middle of the day, it will help.

chapter 2 and they say I say

Andrew Hatzenbihler

10-5-16

1. We choose to focus on issues that are meaningful to our current context, whether that be in our classroom, home, or social life. The questions we ask are ones that are relevant to our work and the community that surrounds that work. We do these things because they can help us become better educators who have the ability to adapt to most any situation in the classroom.
2. Problematize means to create a question that has been crafted finely enough from our thoughts and ideas so that it can be investigated. Action research depends on this because we need to have the adaptability of our contexts and the ability to focus that context and our ideas into an “equation”.
3. Context matters to action research because our questions we ask depend on the current context, which determines what we are thinking, which then helps us “problematize” our ideas and thoughts.
4. Characteristics of Workable critical question include that it is important to you, contains a good idea, focused, supports mission, informs your work, and is authentic among other qualities. Critical questions change with the action research because the action research can change with the context.

1. The classroom I will be conducting my action research in is a Developmental Learning Center that revolves around low cognitive and high behavior students. Social behavior is a priority in the classroom and our schedule and curriculum greatly depend on it. My context affects my action research because I would like to base it around the connection between social connections and a students academic success.
2. After speaking with my colleagues, I learned that many of the students feed off each other. They rely on the social and communal connections with their peers so as to be motivated in the classroom. I still need to find out the specific connections and to what degree each individual student is reliant on them. I will gather this through observations.
3. My choice in this subject reflects my own beliefs of community and how important a community is. A kid needs connections much like adults do when applying for jobs, but kids need them to survive education. They need friends as much as mentors. Sometimes, those people are one and the same.
   
   

They Say I Say intro

It seems that, as a whole, the author of They say I say puts an emphasis on focusing first on what others say in regards to a point you are trying to make or an argument that your are trying to support. I shows that you have regard for others thoughts and it creates a context for your audience. While reading this chapter, I couldn't help but think about a friend of mine that likes to insert himself into a conversation by stating something that steers the conversation in a different way. It feels awkward. I know that sometimes people don't understand social cues, but it is important to recognize others thoughts before asserting your own. I thought about this as a teaching tool as well and it makes so much sense to present to students this way. I like how this book seems to be laying out simple and easy-to-use techniques. It's kind of like going back to 7^th and 8^th grade where we learned how to incorporate devices like these but didn't see the relevance. I can finally appreciate that.