How might your personal history/sociocultural characteristics intersect with those of your students?
My third visit to the elementry school this time was much more productive and I got to know the kids a little bit better. They seemed to open up more and talk about their family and life out of school. It seems that all three children in the group come from big families and have a lot of siblings, which I can relate to because I have two younger sisters and a lot of cousins. Also, when I was younger, in elementry school reading and writing did not come easily to me and I had some trouble with it. One girl in my group doesnt pay attention and is constantly ignoring the activities that we are doing. I think that this is just because she struggles with the activies and feels uncomfortable about not understanding it. For me, it was easier to work with a visual aid and more one on one with the teacher and it seems that for her, it is easier as well. I gave her her own copy of the poem we were reading and her own marker to draw on it with and that seemed to help her because she has control over the situation and the activity.
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Great, bringing yourself, your own experience with cognition/learning helps you (and sometimes makes it harder!) to resolve issues with specific students...
ReplyDeleteI can totally relate to your experience. I deal with a boy who also doesn't wanna pay attention at all, and when i finally got him to sit down and read, i could see it wasn't because he didnt like to, but becaus ehe struggles with reading. It was eye openiong because i misjudged the boy as a troublemaker and just though he was trying to give me a hard time, but he was just reaching out. I also agree with your method of having a visual aid and some one on one time, whcih i ahev also tried to do with the boy.
ReplyDeleteI second Ryan here. So true that we tend to label certain students as troublemakers when their behavior may simply stem from some type of discomfort, may it be academic, development or simply medical such as a hearing loss for instance.
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