In my corporation we have a person called a K-2 specialist, really she is an angel! She pulls a cart into my room everyday for 30 minutes and works with the same children to raise their fluency, and phoneme awareness. She has to consistently progress monitor her students and they have a target that they are trying to achieve. When it comes to getting students tested for Special Education services she is a huge asset. Yesterday, one of my pumpkins brought their progress monitoring pamplet to me and showed me that he had hit his target. Well, I thought, we've got to celebrate. You know that the K-2 specialist and I praised him up one side and down the other, I mean he deserved that. However, when we met as a whole group later...
"Boys and Girls I have an announcement to make, we're going to celebrate! Today Little Boy made his target with Mrs. K-2. You see when Mrs. K-2 assesses her students she makes a chart like this. Today when she made her chart she discovered that Little Boy had gotten his line to the target. That means he has worked really hard and we should be very proud of him. As a community we need to celebrate these things together, because we care about each other. Would you help me give him a celebration?"
Everyone claps, hoops and hollers, and Little Boy blushes, beams, and builds his confidence.
I needed to remember this today, when the rest of the world only sees his numbers on a test, I needed to remember that he is a boy, who needs to feel his worth.
4 comments:
Print this out. Tape it into your journal. Remember it forever. These are the priceless moments that remind us of why we teach.
Thanks for sharing Sarah!
I wish there had more of this kind of thing when I was in school. I don't have any memories of strongly encouraging other classmates like this. Sad.
Good for you guys!
Sarah,
I too, have had to do some recent progress monitoring. And even though I hate putting them in that testing situation with a text that is completely inappropriate for an assessment, I did greatly apprciate your focus on the positive. I like the way you made it a group celebration. It made me think that my cuties might also need some more celebration! Thanks for the positive boost, once again.
How wonderful you're recognizing the child in front of his classmates! Not only will he feel more confident, but it keeps the kids in line who might tease the child because of the reading.
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