Daily blog #9

Today I came into school at 8:30, and began by helping two kindergarteners with the alphabet and spelling. Then I read to about a boy and girl who’s dog has a spell placed on it. They need to run into the woods, and find a bunch of things in order to reverse the spell. I went back and sat with Mrs. Black for a bit while she was working with her second graders. One of the boys was acting very different and silly. He is usually on ADD medication, and it seemed as though he might have been off of them today.
Then we had Group, and started with one student sharing a book about Star Wars. Then we played the game I had made. Once again it was a big hit. We changed the way to play it. This time, I went around the table and asked each student to read one of the vocabulary words. Once they all had the word cards, I went around and showed them a picture card, and who ever had the word and could read it, got the match. While Mrs. Black usually runs group, she started today, but asked me to take over. Although I was a bit nervous I just repeated some of the things I have observed Mrs. Black doing. I’d make sure that everyone was looking at the card, and give each person a turn. At the end of group, Mrs. Black asked one of the autistic children to spell the word block on a white board. He first drew a happy spider, and then wrote block. Since there is an intern leaving, Mrs. Black asked the little boy to write the word love. When he hears this, he automatically draws a heart on the board.
Later, I worked with the autistic child who needs to work in the minimal distraction room. Mrs. Black asked me if I wanted to give it a shot working with him alone, so I did. At first I was really nervous, and wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it. He is a student who often says that he doesn’t want to work with Mrs. Black, and doesn’t want to do anything. However, he worked extremely cooperatively with me, and I got him to do his workbook pages, and to read. We read a book from Basil Readers, which are books that reuse the same words repeatedly, and also follow patterns of sight words.
After lunch there was an IEP meeting for one of the students in group. I will write more about it next week after I talk about it more with Mrs. Black. It was an extremely interesting meeting, and I want to review what happened, and gain a better knowledge of what was being discussed, and the process.