Information Overload

Students today have so much more content to learn, more skills to practice and schedules to remember. In my classroom I have students who get pulled out for speech on Tuesdays and Thursdays during specials and, students who have ESE classes on Mondays and Fridays. Then are a few students who go with one after school Title 1 tutoring company on Monday Wednesdays and another group who go on Tuesday and Thursdays after school.

To top it off, most of the students who get pulled out or are signed up for tutoring don’t want to go. Then they tell lies that they don’t have to go anymore, it’s very confusing and frustrating trying to keep up with each student. I understand that tutoring is not as fun as recess but it was the only time to fit the students in without missing my instructional time.

The problem I see is that my students are confused as to what their schedule is from day to day and I would infer that they are too young to juggle this type of responsibility. My evidence is that these students have difficulty completing homework and are forgetful when the school sends home information that needs to be returned.

I think that my ESE and low achieving students need a simpler schedule not a more complicated one because they already have difficulties with following directions, staying focused, and processing information. Perhaps we as teachers think that if we give more they will absorb more but I think that in this situation less is more.

DOE

My school is an F school because of the number of students who failed the FCAT with a 1 or 2 on both Math and Science. Because we are an F school the Florida Department of Education come to visit our school to make sure we are following the pacing guide, and are complying with DOE’s non negotiable list of things the school and the teachers should be doing.

I feel that teaching Math is my weeks area because I find it difficult to explain why I do an algorithm, and I find myself really stretching to teach the concept another way. Those students who failed the FCAT did not get retained and are now in my class in 5^th grade with barely the basic Math skills we need to build upon in 5^th.

That being said, when DOE came to visit our school I was a wreck, I could hardly sleep the night before and I wasn’t even fully responsible for the classroom yet. The DOE people wanted to see the students working in “centers” during reading in particular. Our class was did not have any centers at all , everything was teacher led instruction and my supervising teacher was against incorporating them. She did not feel comfortable letting the students work in groups. But because DOE was coming to see us we planned together some centers. I on the other hand very much enjoy the mini-lessons in centers and believe that students can learn certain things better from helping each other than by the teacher lecturing.

The first day of centers was interesting because we did not know what to expect. I had experience with centers in subjects like Social Studies and Science but I felt that Reading centers would be focused more on the skills and less on the activity. The class was enthusiastic about using the Smart Board and getting on the computers, and they followed directions well. Their behavior convinced my supervising teacher to continue using centers even if DOE wasn’t going to be watching.