I love when I come up with a plan for my students and it works!! My plan to help the students with the transition time between an educational assistant and myself is a success. The EA has to leave before I get there and the students were having a hard time with the free time. The students could not get focused for our 15 minutes together. I spoke to the EA and asked her to get them started on their independent work. She did this, but as soon as she was gone the students would loose track of what they were supposed to be doing. I decided the problem was that they are kids and left untended they are going to loose track of what they are doing. After all the are only first graders. So it was time to come up with a way to mold their behavior. I am a firm believer in using positive reinforces to change behavior. Fortunately for me first graders love stickers. I laid out the routine and their choices and explained that each day they are on task when I come into the room they each earn a choice of 2 stickers. Right from the start they loved this idea and have been on task every time I get there.

Part of being a special education teacher is working with and/or supervising other people. In one situation, at my student teaching placement, I share a small group with one of the SPED Educational Assistants. The assistant in this position is here as a long term substitute, covering for another assistant who is on leave. She’s a great person, the children like her and she works very hard. The one problem we are having is transitioning our shared group from her to me. She works with them on spelling and handwriting for a half an hour and then I come and continue to work with them for fifteen minutes. The group contains three students who, earlier in the day I have for seventy-five minutes of reading. Two of the students also have ninety minutes of math in this resource room. Basically by the time she gets these students they have had a full day of academics and are getting tired and squirrely. Because of the way the schedule is written she has to leave to supervise other student’s right at 12:30 and I often run a little late getting to this group because I am leading a math group in another room. There are other adults in the Resource Room, but they are running groups, however the children are safe because they have some peripheral supervision. Another complication is that we have different styles of instruction and different behavior expectations. So the problem is that when I get to this group they are off task and inattentive. It’s hard when I only have fifteen minutes to work with them, which is cut down by three to four minutes because I come in late, and then I can’t seem to get them back on task. The best solution to this situation would be for one of us to stay with the group for the whole forty-five minutes, but because of scheduling that isn’t going to happen. I also feel like they have spent more than enough time away from their peers and the last fifteen minutes would be better spent back in the general education classroom. This is also not an option because the time is written into their IEPs. So the only option is to come up with a plan so that the students keep busy and engaged.

I feel that the best plan for this transition time is for the students to reread the story form the earlier reading. They need to practice independent reading and rereading the story from earlier in the day will help cement the words and or sounds from that lesson. I have asked the assistant to give the instruction for the students to reread the story and I have left the books on the table as a reminder. For some reason I cannot get this to happen with any kind of consistency. She has been fairly consistent with having them read a book off the bookshelf’s but one day last week, Thursday to exact, I came into the room and the students were all doing things that they did not have permission to do. When I got to the group I had a hard time getting them to put up the things they were playing with. They were not the least bit interested in working on reading, spelling or handwriting and I was frustrated because the assistant had let them play with things that they should not have been playing with. Needless to say the group was not enjoyable for any of us. Later, when I had the opportunity to speak with the assistant, she explained that she had lost track of time and had to leave the group in a hurry. I told her that it had made for a very stressful time for both the students and I and that she really needed to make sure they knew they needed to be reading when she left. She said she would make that clear to them in the future. This week hasn’t gone much better. They are back to reading books off the bookshelves, but they are still not rereading the story from earlier in the day. I had another conversation with the assistant and she informed me that when she leaves they are rereading the story for the lesson. So, the problem is that the students change what they are doing after the assistant leaves. Now I had to come up with a way to motivate the students to reread the story. I am going to try using stickers. I bought some new more exciting stickers and I am going to tell them that they can have one every day they are rereading the story. On top of the stickers we will have game time on Fridays (Thursdays on four day weeks) if they reread the stories the other four (or three) days. Tomorrow I will introduce this new plan to the students.