Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner; put yourself in his place so that you may understand...what he learns and the way he understands it.
Soren Kierkegaard
It was one of those days again where my student struggled through the session and not much was accomplished, as planned. He complained of a stomach ache, so that might have been the reason for his sluggishness. At any rate, we did accomplish a few things such as, reviewing word lists of onset-and-rime words, word lists from the QRI-3 text, and oral reading of a primer level narrative passage from the book. My student also copied his dictation story to add to his collection of stories using vocabulary words from his word bank. The highlight of the session was when he received tokens for correct identification and spelling of words from last week's word bank. Whatever stress I might have felt during the session, got erased when I saw the look of such happiness on his face as he put the tokens into his token box for safe-keeping until he could redeem them for prizes, later. This small gesture on my student's part certainly put my plan into perspective - small steps forward...giant leaps, later!
I was so proud of him, too, as I watched him receive his tokens. Hopefully that one-of-a-kind smile was captured on the photos. It's in plodding through those tough days and still being able to see success that shows how great a Reading Specialist you already are. Life will have stomachaches. It's all in how you work around them, I guess.
ReplyDeleteYour student always brings a smile to my face. So much character in him. Always full of surprising comments too. Laughter is good medicine for the soul.
ReplyDeleteDoes he like jokes? Maybe that could be fun too. Excellent idea with the token system Geri. Give it some more time and he'll crack the code.
ReplyDeleteGeri,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to know how to pick him up quickly when he he's feeling "sluggish". I hope he's feeling better! Keep up the motivation in tokens!~ He's taken with your reward system, if that doesn't motivate him, I don't know what will...oh yes and the snacks too!!