Floating

Bonjour,

Tuesday was my first day back at work after the holidays, and I have been floating around my school since I've finished my temp contract and I'm still waiting for them to get me back on the sub list, so I thought I'd reflect on how that's going...

Primarily, I have been working with students from grade 4-6 who struggle with reading and/or writing. Some of them have diagnosed LDs, others don't.  I have been working with them to get them using Dragon Dictate dictation software so that they can get their ideas out and to help them with their spelling and grammar.  I also set up a Dragon Dictate profile for a visually impaired student.  As well, I have been teaching them to use Read & Write Gold to help students who struggle with reading- the program reads PDF documents, Word docs, and web pages.  Additionally, it is useful as editing software, as there is a "predict" tool that shows suggestions of possible words that students may be trying to type.  I had mixed feelings about having students dictate rather than physically write or type, as I feel these are valuable skills, however, printing and word processing are skills that they have been practicing since kindergarten, and there are some students who can really benefit from these programs.  I would not recommend that students begin using these tools before Grade 4 unless they have been diagnosed with a learning disability, as they are still learning printing and the sounds that words make, and if they are struggling with their writing/reading, it is possible that they could benefit from additional practice and/or tutoring.

When I wasn't busy training students to use assistive technology, I helped out with reading in Div I.  I think that teaching Grade 1 French Immersion is probably the most challenging grade to teach, especially at the beginning of the year.  If I were to teach Grade 1 FI, I would need A LOT of help lol.

I also worked with a Grade 3 student to practice saying the name of numbers in French.  (Ex: 40: quarante).  By grade 3, the students should have mastered recognizing and reading numbers 0-100.    I checked to see if he knew what the numbers were in English, and that was all good, and I told him, "No problems there," and he replied, "That's because I was born in English." *giggle*  He also had some riddles for me: Q: "What do you call a man with a rubber toe?" A: "Rrroberto!" (He rolled the "R" at the beginning).  I didn't really have a plan of what to do so I grabbed some tiles with numbers from 0-100 and a list of the numbers with the written form next to the word.  I put the tiles face down and said we'd take turns flipping tiles and the first person to read the number would win the tile.  Of course that would not be fair to him so I gave him 10 seconds before I read the tile.  He actually did really well, and when it was time for him to go back to class he told me (without being prompted) that he thought that was a really fun game. :D

The biggest realization that I've had this week is that I enjoy Div I more than Div II.  The younger kids are just so funny.

That's all for now folks!