Student Testing

Our school will begin to test our 100% special education population using the PARCC online test beginning Monday 3/23/2015. There will be three ELA tests and two math tests. These count as the mid year tests. We will then have 16 days of additional instruction and then test them again for the end of the year tests. Two more of ELA and two more of math. We spend a quarter of our year either testing or doing test prep. This is an estimate and we may actually spend even more time than that. The bulk of our students will not pass. It is one more time that my students are told that they don’t measure up. Our students make great strides and grow but their growth cannot always be measured as they are so below grade level.
As a teacher I will work hard to prepare them and talk about focusing on what they can do not what they struggle with. We will try to pull out the positives and talk about their growth and not their score. We will have a growth mind set although I wish I could measure their growth with a yardstick that wasn’t so painful.

Differentiated Instruction

As a special education teacher you would think as a group this is all we do; however that is not the case. I have been observing classes and have found that many special education teachers think of great strategies to get their students to learn. This sounds great but then these teachers apply these strategies to ALL the students in the class whether they are the best strategy for that student or not. Not all students need the same scaffolding, not all students need read alouds. Differentiating is more than that. It is taking your students needs, abilities and deficits along with their interests and tweaking all or parts of your lesson to that student. My favorite way to differentiate is to use stations. Many middle and high school teachers do not use this strategy. I have found it highly effective. I have three flexible groups and they have a computer portion. We use ALEKS program which tailors instruction to each students needs. I have an independent station. I keep the work in envelops and each group has their own assignment and then I have a group that works with me. I have small classes anyway and this lets me get the groups even smaller to focus in on student needs. It is more work to set these up but I feel I make it up in classroom management time. Students have 20 minutes in each station so there is movement, students work at their levels and can experience success. This is not the only way to differentiate. The most important piece is to know your students and not to be afraid to try new ideas!

Back to school

Welcome back to the new school year. Changes for our school include a new curriculum: Big Ideas. I was a big fan of the CMP curriculum however I am going to be open minded and give Big Ideas a chance. We are working on rules and structures in the classroom. As we loop with students I am now again with 7th graders. We begin with integers. I will keep you posted.

Presenting At NCTM

Hello All,

I am presenting at NCTM in New Orleans this Friday 4/11/2014. I wanted to include a site where you can get many rule of four graphic organizers to use in your classrooms. These are not made up by me but I have used many with great success.
http://www.umassmed.edu/rsrc/Library/MathGraphicOrganizers/ There is a zip drive that you must save then when you open the file open the Elementary-pre calculus then the instructional strategize and finally open the folder labeled link. I call them rule of four graphic organizers but they are the same thing. I have found that using these allowed my special education students more access to the curriculum. More student were able to devise a rule that worked than when they were given a problem. Give them a try in your classroom and let me know what happens!

MCAS Testing

As my school is in the thick of ELA MCAS testing and I see the stress on the student’s faces as well as the staff I feel conflicted. I know that these types of tests and the results that are required have changed the face of special education. I worked in alternative settings elsewhere before MCAS existed. I was an interventionist in an alternative setting. The rigor for “these” types of students wasn’t there. It was not uncommon for me to play the card game “Rummy” with students daily or they were given worksheets that were procedural with no connections to anything. These work sheets were often far below their grade level. Then came the MCAS and changes began to happen. The social emotional student’s scores began to count. We got text books in our program where we had none. Technology appeared. At the school where I work currently I would challenge you to find more dedicated hardworking teachers. The students receive the same curriculum taught by teachers using the same standards as the rest of the district. The conflict I feel towards these tests that is the importance of how a student does on one day. All the students at my school have an IEP. Special Education studentsw can grow and learn and do; but the difficulty of getting a student who is preforming so far below grade level up to grade level is arduous and difficult to measure. I wish these was a better way to test the students where they are and show how far they have come. I wish graduation was not tied to these tests. I wish teachers were not so pressured by the results of these tests that they could relax and have fun with their class. Math is super fun if you can take a little time to do projects and complex problems. Many teachers push on and study for that big test they know is so important. These tests are here to stay and the results from these test matter a great deal. I just hope they are not now hurting the very students they were supposed to be helping.

Special Education and Mathematics

I wanted to start this blog about Special Education and Mathematics as there are so many students who are in Special Education and so few Special Education Teachers that are also certified in Mathematics content. This site will be sharing resourses and tips for keeping mathematics problems rich for a variety of learners. My hope is that teachers will learn to look beyond having students just being able to do computations that can be done with calculators and allowing Special Education students access to rich problems that will allow them to think deeply.

I am including  “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart. I had always felt like this in school and had no interest in mathematics. It wasn’t until I was able to understand the math and work with rich problems that I ever even started liking mathematics.

http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

Here are some site to get folks started with learning about disabilities in Mathematics.

http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/dyscalculia?gclid=CK_5sebg4rwCFRJo7AodnAQA4A 

http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/learningdisabilitybasics/p/ldbasicmath.htm

http://www.cldinternational.org/infosheets/mathdisabilities.asp

 

My wish is to have amthematic classes such as the one below where students are excited to be in class!

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