Halfway through my student teaching and completely finished with my work sample. I will spend the next six weeks enjoying my time in the elementary students without the pressure of going home every night and spending two hours working on my work sample. I feel great about the way my groups are going. The students have become accustom to me and my expectations and they all seem to bee making progress. Each of the students that I am working with have had an impact on me. I love the diversity of their personalities and needs. It is rewarding when you find something that a child can enjoy while learning. One of my math students, who is impacted by autism, will work very hard if at the end of group he is given time to make math problems out of building blocks. Not only does he make the build the math problem with the blocks, he also write the number sentence to go with it. He thinks this is a reward and I think he is gaining more math skills. In the same group I have another young man who is easily distracted, but has made such great gains this year that he can do most of the math independently. This student often finishes his work ahead of the other two students. One of my concerns for this student is that he write many numbers and letters backwards. So when he finishes his work I give him the Stamp and See from Handwriting Without Tears and he practices writing his numbers. He thinks it's fun and I think it will help him with his letter reversals. The last young man in this group is highly impacted with ADHD. His attention span is about ten seconds, but he is the kindest, sweetest little boy. The best thing about this guy is that he wants to do well. He often says thing like; "But I want to follow directions," or "It's hard to pay attention," or "This is hard." The truth is he really is doing his best and he doesn't understand what we expect from him. So, to help him understand exactly which of his behaviors need to change I have started using the teacher student game. Each time he talks out, stares off or does not follow my directions I take a point. Each time he exhibits proper student behavior (asking when asked, staying seated, writing the answers in his book) he gets a point. If he looses (which should not happen more than once in a two week period) he owes me a minute at recces. For every point he earns he gets that number of color spots on he prize incentive sheet. I don't really like taking recces time away, but that is school policy so I feel that I have to use it. This student really struggles with subtraction. He can count backwards from twenty, but when you ask him to cannot back one time from five he cannot do it. I take a little extra time everyday with him and really work with subtraction. This group often feels like three separate groups and it is very challenging to keep them all occupied at the same time, but that is what I live about this job. That and their sweet little smiles.