Struggling Students

Kepler is a student in my class who always surprises me. He knows so much knowledge about the world because he travels so much throughout the year. His mother is a professional writer and he loves telling me all the things she writes about. He probably knows every type of train and his high vocabulary surprises me every time I am in the classroom. However, Kepler has so many ideas in his little head that struggles to convey his thoughts through writing. Whenever the students in my class are assigned to write in their journals, he always takes so long to come up with something to write about that he only has about one sentence on his paper when the rest of the students are moving on to the next activity. He is always in need of a teacher to talk him through his writing so he can come up with ideas to write about. Even when he knows what he wants to write, he writes very slowly, thinking about the spelling of every word. Kepler loves to read and always has a book to recommend to me!

Paris is another student in my class that struggles with conveying her thoughts through writing. However, she has many problems trying to understand what they are asking of her to write about. She is low-achieving in almost every subject and needs extra assistance on her assignments. Paris likes to read aloud to me, yet she skips over many words and does not read with much expression. Paris depends a lot on her peers to help her through her writing assignments, asking them what they are writing about and copying off their ideas. Paris never hesitates to ask for help.
Alan is another student in my classroom who does not like reading or writing. Whenever he is assigned either one he goofs around and distracts his peers. In order to get him to beginning writing a teacher has to sit down with him and get him started. He has an attitude like he does not care about what he is working on and the teacher basically ends up giving Alan all his ideas for his writing assignments because he never can come up with ideas on his own. I think teachers just get frustrated with him and he has learned that they will eventually help him through his entire assignments so he does not have to try on his own. Alan is an EI student and always has a parapro with him. When Alan is reading he seems to just look at the picture and not the text itself. He can read, but not very fluently and often asks how to say many of the words because he does not try to sound them out on his own.

If I was working with Alan on comprehension I would like to use the “Hot Seat” activity in the Gibbons text. Alan loves to be the center of attention and loves to make his peers laugh. Since he has trouble figuring out what he can write on paper, I believe this activity would allow him to convey his thoughts while talking to his peers through a fun activity. In this activity Alan would portray a character in from a book and then answer questions from his peers pretending to be a specific character. Alan would love to do this activity and it would allow him to shine, along with using his comprehension skills to act like the character in the story.
If I was working with Paris on being able to comprehend what she is reading along with learning from her peers rather than copying from them I would use the activity “I’m Thinking of” in the Gibbons text. This activity would allow Paris to work in a group, something she is comfortable doing, and however, it would allow her to be able to come up with her own ideas so she would not be tempted to copy off her peers. She will be able to use her previous knowledge and turn it into a game where her peers will try to guess what she is describing. This activity will also allow Paris to gain knowledge from her peers because they will be modeling for her when it is their turn.

If I was working on conveying Kepler’s thoughts on paper I would use the activity, “Journal Writing” from the Gibbons text. This is simple writing practice that will get Kepler into the routine of writing after every assignment. The more writing, the faster he will get with putting his thoughts into words on paper and keeping up with the rest of his class. This journal activity asks the question, “What did I learn.” Even though this may seem very tedious to Kepler, it allows the teacher to see not only the improvement in Kepler’s writing over time, but also it will be a good assessment for the teacher to see if Kepler understands what he is reading, and not just moving slow through his writing.