Last photo for 2012 and a soon to be released Blog Hop

For my final photo of my students for 2012 I wanted to share this with you.  This is my friend "Mary" and if you haven't read about her in my previous posts you can catch up here.  Mary is profoundly deaf without her cochlear implants and she has a visiting teacher that comes to school 3 times a week to help her with speech, cognitive skills and a range of other valuable teaching in both the classroom and in a 1 on 1 situation.
There is no way either of us could have gotten through this year without her help and the help of our Teacher Aide, so thank you to all the staff who support the students and the teachers in the classroom.

Mary made this with her visiting teacher, it is a button wreath inspired by Pinterest

This is the Pinterest pin.

So as I finish my year with one of the most inspiring students I have had the pleasure of teaching I am happy to say that I have gained so much from all the students in my class and hope that we have made a difference in each others lives.  Thank You to all my students!

Now this just coincidentally falls into place to help celebrate the end of a great year for me.  A few of my fabulous blogger friends are putting together a Santa's Little Helper Blog Hop, it will be full of fabulous freebies so you do not want to miss it.....stay tuned this will be happening very soon and I can tell you there is a huge surprise at the end!

Coming to a blog near you soon!

A students milestone!

I had an awesome day with my class today, not even Daylight Savings and up and down weather could bring me down! 

This is how it started....during Daily 5 I was reading with a group and one of my littles was having a struggle with one particular word, I waited and observed the strategies he was attempting to use, then the little girl next to me pipes up with "Coaching or time?"  I was so stunned I didn't really have an opportunity to jump in, the little boy replied to her, "Coaching please."  

She said, "Maybe you need to try some other strategies, what about flip the sound or chunking?"  Together they worked out the word, went back and re-read to Check for Understanding, all without too much input from me!  Remember this is Guided Reading, not Read to Someone.

I was almost superfluous, she also decided that she needed to give the students some positive feedback, like " *insert name* you read a little bit like a robot, but I really liked the way you used expression!"  I was blown away......then.....the other students decided that if she could do it so could they!   The positive feedback was flying thick and fast, the strategies were being suggested and used!  

It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! 

The fantabulousness ( I think we are allowed to make up words because we are educators)  did not stop there.  After lunch we worked on finding keywords in math word problems to identify what algorithm we were going to use.  Then they had to solve the problem and explain how they did it.  One little said for this alogorithm  12 + 15 + 17 =  ......" I just used the split strategy, 10, 10 and 10, that's 30...then 5 and 2 is 7 and there is another 7 so that is 14, 30 +14 is 44!"  Woooohooooo.

But wait there's more!  We completed our Spring Wattle trees, here are the pics...

I think they are too cute and I love the green and gold!

The best was to be the last of the day! 

 My student with special needs (hearing impairment, visual impairment and intellectually disabled, you can read about her here and here )  made a huge breakthrough today.  Keep in mind that she is in a Year 2/3 classroom and operates at a pre-kinder level....well today she drew a picture and "told" (she signs so I had to adlib a tiny bit) me a story about her picture.  This is the first time she has ever done it!  Previously she has only traced and copied words, letters, sentences etc, she didn't seem to get the concept that she had to explain her pictures.  I am going to be very indulgent here as I am a very proud teacher today and here are a few pics to show you her achievement!

These are the 3 pics she did today!

This is a close up of the first pic she did.  She signs my name as MP 

Cats are one of her favourite animals

 She usually signs just the first letter for peoples names, this is her Teacher Aide.

I guess you can tell how proud I am of her!  I must admit it was a bit difficult to hold back the tears and many of the other kiddos were giving me a bit of a strange look, but were very quick to compliment her on her hard work.  I was a blubbering mess and to help her celebrate I sent her to visit the Principal, who promptly came to see me and joined in on the blubberfest.  We are hoping this is the beginning of her writing journey and I am so privileged to have been there when it started for her.  What a magnificent day to be a teacher!

 

Oh What a Night

Wow!!!  Last night we had our Dance Spectacular at school.  This is a concert that showcases the dances our students have learned in the previous term.  We are very lucky in that we have a visiting professional dancer teach and choreograph our dances for a 10 week block, then over the next few weeks we practice the dance with our class.  We make or hire the costumes and are often working right up to the last minute to get it right, then in Spectacular fashion we perform our dances for the families.
This year my class were parrots and performed a dance to the song "Take me to Rio" from the movie Rio, we looked fabulous with lots of bling and feathers!  As some of you may know I have a special needs student in my class, "Mary" and she requires quite a bit of support to get through the day, this includes performing the dance.  I was very lucky to be able to dance with "Mary" and help support her through the dance.  She was AMAZING and so excited to perform, and just like me she does love a dress up so we had lots of mutual admiration for each others costumes.  Here are is a pic of my class enjoying their performance and a special pic of me and my special dancing friend.

A HUGE congratulations to my whole class who performed beautifully and who also supported "Mary" throughout the whole process.  I will be including how I made the wings for our costume in the next Monday Made It Linky, I was just too busy making and rehearsing to get up a blog about them earlier!

A special student

I wanted to tell you about a special student in my class, for privacy reasons we will call her Mary.  Mary is profoundly deaf and has many learning difficulties that means she is below grade level compared to her peers.  She has a number of hurdles she must overcome each day, just to get to school. She has severe eczema over her entire body which requires constant monitoring and an eye condition that requires her to have antibiotic ointment everyday and throughout the day, she has a lot of trouble with motor skills both gross and fine.  She sees a number of medical specialists and has two cochlear implants.  This has made an enormous difference to her, however because she didn't have any type of hearing aid until she was about 4 yrs old she has missed all the oral language young children receive in the early years of life.
The reason I think this student is so special is not because of her special needs in the classroom but because every day she turns up to school with a huge smile on her face and the best sound I hear all day is the sound of her laughter.  It reminds me everyday how fortunate I am to have two healthy, happy children and that no matter what life throws at me I always have something to smile about.
Below is a pic of "Mary" learning which fingers to use for each vowel.  

We use many resources in the classroom to help with sign language including putting up the signs around the classroom for objects, colours etc.  This way other students are able to communicate with Mary as well.
We sing songs using sign and we have picture books with the signs as well as text, we also roster "play dates" with her peers and teach them how to ask her to play.  We are in the process of making some IWB pages that other classes will be able to access to learn some signs when talking to Mary.


I would love to hear from other teachers how they create accessibility for hearing impaired students.