This week I was posed with this question to think about during my blogging process. There are a few things that come to mind but the first thing is definitely the behavior management issue as well as appropriately engaging a student who is visually impaired. During my first week of teaching I taught every day after lunch. On my first day I was completely blown away by the lack of behavior management as well as the noise level. Classrooms here are run so differently from those in the states and that was quite a shock. Some how it works for the teachers who teach as Isla, but it did not work for me so I decided to make a change. I created a behavior plan and decided to enforce it on my second day of teaching. My plan was to have the students play a game called "Teacher versus Students". I first described my expectations of the students and then introduced the game. If the students accomplished one of my expectations I would give them a point, but if they failed to accomplish the expectation I would give myself a point. If the students won at the end of the day I told them that they would receive a prize. The prizes were the school supplies that were donated to our group. The students took the the game quickly and loved it! I was thrilled! We played the game every day that week and it got more and more successful. It was amazing to see the transformation just because of a little game. I also awarded students who had exceptional behavior with a small red ticket. Students wrote their names on the ticket and I put them into a bag. At the end of the week I raffled off larger school supplies to students who had tickets. The kids loved this as well and it was another great incentive for them to behave well.
My second issue that I struggled with this week is something that is not as easy to address. As I have mentioned before I have a visually impaired student who typically does not get to participate in classroom activities. I really wanted to differentiate my instruction in order to include her in everything that we did. So, the second day of teaching I drew huge words on pieces of construction paper and made cut out smaller words for our activity. This way Dayanara could read the letters and do the activity. I also brought bold markers in and a pad with large lines on it. I wrote every worksheet out on large lined paper so that Dayanara could read it. I also monitored her work and helped her write things that she could not during individual work time. I also had Dayanara pass things out and underline words on the white board. This way she felt included and was always participating in the instruction. Every day I pulled Dayanara out for an hour and a half to work on her Braille and also her Braille Machine. I also brought in flash cards with large print to help her practice her phonics and math facts. On top of that I found all of the books in the library with large print and practiced reading with Dayanara and sounding out words. We used many manipulatives so that she could feel materials rather than try and see them and these also helped her to learn more of her Braille. We made a lot of progress in inclusion and her Braille skills but I still have a lot more work to do in the upcoming weeks!
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