Special Ed Kindergarten Class

Observations

Assumptions/Questions/Connections

New student visiting! Potential student for next year

Tours with mother than leaves even though plan was for him to stay the morning through snacktime

Teacher said that he is 5 chronologically but “much younger mentally”

Left because he was nervous? Uncomfortable? All of the above?

M. says “he seems nice. I hope he stays” while playing at art table

Morning question: “How are you feeling today?” check marks under excited, tired, or happy

Two teachers talking about “good pairings” – Ms A tells Ms. C that Z and P are not a good paing based on loft activity – “remember when we were talking about good pairings? Z and P are NOT one”

M. gets a ball again

Last observation you asked what kind of ball it was – and it was one of those small plastic ones with spikes on it. They also used these at a known special ed school in DC. What’s interesting is that M. will then pass it to other students when he’s done – it never stays with him, and then the teachers have to take it away from other students.

During morning meeting the teacher points out that there is a “popcorn” word in the sentence and asks a student to come up and point it out. Even after the popcorn word was identified, students continue to point out other words that aren’t popcorn words

Do they just want a turn ;)

Miss N. (head of school) was in the classroom during this part so maybe they just wanted her attention?

Or does something like this happen each time?

Speech Pathologist center activity – making sentences out of pictures using past tense (yesterday)

Some examples of what were said:

-          Woman is grocery storing

-          Putted

-          Were brushing/were raking rather than brushed/raked

-          Her ate her cookie

Language acquisition – overgeneralization. After studying language in psychology, I’ve noticed that the speech delayed 5 year olds make the same overgeneralization mistakes on past tense as 3 year olds are stereotypically expected to.

M., same boy with ball at circle time, gets a transition chart on behavior because he was getting “touchy” or violent with other students during transition between centers

M. seems to be very competitive (as told to me by a teacher) and whenever he is in a group, they need to make sure it is a non-competitive game (ie., today it was the FROG getting the gumballs, rather than the person who was hopping the frog, or a couple weeks ago when it was the snail race)