Blog Entry #3

     I helped out Mrs. Black today in the Special Education program since my regular teacher is on vacation. With these students it is even more important to keep them engaged. It is really difficult to keep them focused long enough to get through an assignment. Mrs. Black has come up with awesome ways to get the students to pay attention though.

    The first thing she had me do was helping a student with writing. He had a hard time to sit through long enough to get through one sentence without going on rave about his day. I was really struggling to keep him attentive and I didn't want the teacher to feel like I wasn't capable. She was amazing though and just came over to help and give me tips. One way for writing she does is if they don't like the writing prompt, she lets them right about whatever they like. They aren't at the level yet where it matters what they are writing about, it is more important just to get them spelling out words. Once she told me we could switch topics and write about what he wants, it made a huge difference. He went from writing one sentence every 10 minutes to writing almost a paragraph. She keeps the students engaged by relating it to their world.

    Another way she did this was by making the math work into a game. After every time they finished a math problem, they got to move one space on the board. Whoever made it there first would win an extra square (if they reach a certain amount of squares they get a sticker). It made the math work interactive for the students and gave them an opportunity to work on the problems while also developing speed a long with it. She ended up giving everyone an extra square since they did so well and gave the winning student two extra. It was way more fun for the students than just doing math off of worksheets. 

    One last example of keeping the students engaged was through a learning website. Once again instead of just writing words down on pieces of paper, the website made it fun for them and had them relate to real world connections. It would say a word aloud and the student would have to pick the correct spelling. It put the words into "hidden spots" around a park, a store, in space, whatever the students chose. It made the students look around for common spots that word would be and to make sure they picked the one with correct spelling. Technology has really made it a lot easier to engage students into learning and give teachers new ways to provide that to the students.