Over the past few weeks, I have had several conferences with the principal and administration of the school, a.k.a the Beauregard family. In these meetings, we have discussed the future of the 5 young boys in my class that I work with every day. While they are falling behind in every class listed on the grade card, Mrs. Beauregard believes that these individuals only need to focus on reading. I am instructed to teach only phonics, spelling, reading, writing and a bit of math. When they decide they want to read, and finally catch on to it, she believes everything else will come with time, but their reading skills really need to develop soon or they never will. To put this into action, I have taken Social Studies and Science almost completely out of my class. This is very hard to do as they are some of my favorite subjects and ones that I feel I can teach better than Reading. However, I am listening to the administrative decisions and going on with teaching Reading. During each day, we spend about and hour or two working only on our spelling words, breaking them up into syllables, looking at letter combinations and when they appear in other words, long and short vowels and what makes them this way, as well as definitions and actually using these words in sentences. This tends to be the hardest for them to do. They can all memorize the spelling of the word long enough to pass the test, but actually making them put them to use in a sentence is what sinks their boat on each test. Therefore, we put tons of effort into getting them to do that this week.
Early Friday morning, I have them all study a bit on their own as I finish us with some grading then start to help them. We go over sentences, definitions and actual spellings. I show them a few ways that helped me growing up, such as making acrostics. (I think it is called acrostics) This really seemed to help them. Nervous about if they were going to make the same grades of F's that they have all year, I had them clear their desks and get out some paper. I started giving words, demanding that I only repeat them once, making them pay close attention.
After giving all the words, I gave them a while to write a sentence per word and waited patiently for them to finish. After getting them all turned in, I started the grading process. Usually I use about a pen-full worth of ink to grade their tests each week. I got my fresh pen out and went to work.
My two best students' tests were on the top, proving to be once again the highest in the class. Out of 20 possible points they missed about 3 each, but nailed the extra credit, giving them A's. The first time ever. Then came my two worst students who have never received an A on anything except lunch. After checking a few wrong, they got upset cause they really believed they had done good. Cursing me, they turned and walked away swearing that "I" always give them bad grades. I grade to hard. (Personally, I don't understand how checking a word wrong because it is misspelled is being to tough, but hey, to each their own.) As they walk away, I am tickled silly to actually see they had the rest of the test correct, even the extra credit.
For the first time this year, I handed out 0 F's, 0 D's, 1 C, 2 B's and and A (One boy was not there for the test). I have never been more proud for a group of people as I was standing there in my classroom. For once I felt as if my work had been completed for a bit. Maybe this is one of those moments teachers talk about where you just have a smile because you know that you have done something to change a person. It is something like that, that makes me excited to get back to work and give them more words to see if they can keep it up. My weekend has been that much better due to 5 boys actually trying in my class!
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