Day 15: Aiding diversity

Today I have been asked by the third-and-fourth-grade teacher to help her attend one child with difficulties in the third grade classroom. He showed an unusual behavior, becoming unable to grab the pencil correctly, extremely excited at being asked to write or to face complex tasks, with big difficulties to focus or stay still and calm, and sometimes showing sudden aggressive behavior towards the other classmates.

The teacher asked a child how was she feeling today, and she acted out the way the child felt for all the students to see. Then, the teacher asked the other students how they felt, and the children with difficulties I was with said he was angry. The teacher said that was very good, and drew an angry face at the blackboard. She asked me how I was feeling and I added an extra adjective to the list, mimicking the action by myself.

Then, the teacher asked the students to draw six different faces with the sentences below them, and I divided the students’ attention from the color tray towards the teacher’s explanations, in a positive way. After that, the student threw the colored pencil remnants over the table all of a sudden, and I calmed him down. I asked him to pick up the rubbish and throw it into the box, by showing everything I was doing to him and changing the intonation. He performed the task quickly, but when his partner took the box away from him he hit him in a violent way. Then I briefly told him off, and changed his attention towards the task.

I pointed at the different faces on the blackboard and asked him what that was. As he answered, I gave him the tray again in order to make the different drawings and told him how to draw the different faces. He showed good predisposition towards the task, which I supported with positive reinforcement and oral interaction. The biggest issue was when he was asked to write the sentence in English under the images. I managed to make him do the first one, but the task made him utterly nervous, so I told the teacher and she told me she would try to make him continue. After a few unsuccessful tries, she gave him a different task which he could perform; also cognitively rich but which did not require as much coordination.

In the meantime I helped another child do the letters smaller, by making him repeat the last words he had written in a more suitable handwriting. I also showed through mimic a girl what was what in her confusion between hunger and thirst. The first one managed to considerably improve his performance during the lesson. I also made him talk by asking him questions about what he had drawn or written.

When the bell rang, I went to the small patio in the roof, where the playground for the youngest children was located on. There, I talked to some children and the teachers as well. I learnt the first group was quite difficult to manage and that half of the children’s parents were divorced. I talked about many things about the children and the school and helped some children who were verbally fighting each other.

I asked them what happened and told them if they disagreed on something; they had to talk to each other in order to try to solve the problem rather than fighting. I told them we adults at the school sometimes disagree on something and we discuss in order to find for the best solution or one which suited us both. Obviously I did not use these words but simpler ones, and the child understood, apologized to his partner and went back to play again. I also spoke to some children who asked me about my name and the subject I taught and joked with some others.

Back in class, this time I was with the first-and-second grade teacher teaching second. I was asked to make some children a re-exam in which they had the opportunity to repeat the parts they wanted to improve from the last one they did. I took them to another room and told them to place the rubber in the middle of the table for the ones to be able to use it as well, and that if they talked I would pick up the exam back and they would lose the opportunity to have a higher mark. It worked and the students showed a good behavior and finished the exam correction early. As they finished, I sent them back to class.

 In the afternoon, the same teacher as the last class one made a standard lesson with different listening activities and a speaking one about clothes where I showed them what as I wearing. The classroom went well, because the activities were appropriate, meaningful and cognitive-demanding for the children to work with. In the last hour, however, we had the first group, and it was more difficult to manage, as the teachers had said before. The text books in this case, however, had too easy tasks for the children to perform, mostly about repeating words, matching them to their drawings and coloring or gluing stickers.  I think the teacher is aware of that too, because sometimes she complements the book activities with extra ones she prepares, more meaningful and cognitively demanding, in order to prevent the children from becoming bored due to the easy and repetitive manner of the text book ones.