Thursday, October 21, 2010

At-risk Learner

K is one of the boys in the classroom I am doing my field experience in. He is struggling in math. He actually comes to this classroom because he has a learning disability in math and needs extra help. He doesn't always get the one-on-one help he probably needs due the fact that there are other students coming to the classroom at the same time for the same reason. One of the days I was observing, K turned his math homework in and as the teacher was checking his answers, he got answer after answer wrong. The entire page of math problems ended up being wrong, so the teacher had him start completely over. This time K was working one-on-one with the teacher.  The teacher laid out each problem step-by-step, reading the problems out loud. She would remind him of certain key things such as that he needs to keep his rows lined up and other things along this line. She used memory recall in which K would fill in the blank to the questions she was asking. At one point the teacher asked if K was understanding what was being covered on the homework a little better now that she was doing it with him, but she got no answer back from K. From my own personal observation it seems like the teacher was doing too much of the work for K. Once K had left the classroom the two teachers were talking to themselves. Mrs. M asked the other teacher, "is he figuring out how to do it on his own?," in which she replied, "I'm having to help with with every one." Mrs. M told the other teacher that the next time he really needed to try doing it on his own. Intervention was taking place, but I think in order for this intervention to be helpful in the long run, more emphasis needs to be put on K figuring out the problems more independently.

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