Week 2

This week I administered a pre and post assessment with our reading assignment. The following are the students grades (pre/post):

Ronald: 75/25
Micheal:88/13
Robert:88/50
Angela:100/88

I feel in this lesson I learned more than the students, which sounds negative but it was still a positive learning experience for all. What I learned is that the students who succeeded more were students from the mainstream class room. My teacher referred to them as plain vanilla deaf students meaning all that the main issue is a hearing loss and no other problems. The other students who did not succeed as highly are students who are self-contained and have other issues besides hearing loss. It was a wake up call for me as far as expectations go. I still expect the same amount of effort from each, but now realize more their present level of performance in reading.

The one thing that was successful is the introduction to new vocabulary as I had the students explain the word as we learned the new word/sign. As far as improvements for the next lesson, I would make the format of the paper more clear and include directions to bring clarity for their assignment. I would require less questions on the preassessment for lack of time. My mentor teacher suggested that I use a small amount of reading material, basically to minimize the amount of content covered through questions and reading.

Ideas for the next lesson would be a 3 paragraph passage on Helen Keller from a lower level reading book than the one I used, which was only 1st grade according to TEKS objectives.

I had a great week observing in the gen. ed math class and at a speech therapy session. I did one-on-one work with a low functioning student in math and saw progress throughout the week. I attended my first ARD and saw the logistics that go along with the formality of that meeting. I learned classroom management skills and have begun to focus more on reinforcing good behavior than punishing wrong behavior.

Praise the Lord for a great second week!