Hello everyone!
I am a first year teacher working with 9-10 grade LD kids. Even though I’ve grown up in my Mom’s special ed classroom now that I have one of my own I am absolutely amazed at how much there is to do. I teach 4 curriculum areas across six class periods and only have one period where I don’t have at least two subjects going on. We have block scheduling so my classes are an hour and a half long. I love the challenge of it all, but I have one major concern. In the blocks where I have more than one subject it is usually only 1 or 2 students doing one subject(usually social studies) while the rest of the class (6-7) is working in another area(usually English). My problem is that I feel like I’m neglecting the smaller number of students in the split classes because I cannot leave the 6-7 alone doing something else without losing their focus. I try to do at least 30-45 minutes of group work every block with the larger group so I have time to help the students who have to work alone and without lecture, but I’m not satisfied with what they are accomplishing. The 1 or 2 students who I can’t lecture to usually end up sitting there because they either have questions and it takes a bit to get to them, or they think I’m not watching and start to goof off. I have two rooms that are connected and they often go into the other room so they can concentrate. I really feel like I can’t pass on the importance of social studies to these kids if I can’t talk to them about it and give them support, but I also can’t neglect my English classes since that’s the subject most of my kids need the most help in. I’m sorry this got so long, and I hope you don’t think I’m whining as I get up happy to go to work every morning, it’s just that I am looking for ideas from as many sources as possible and I’ve enjoyed just browsing here for a few days. Any suggestions you have for how to handle multiple subjects in one class period would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, and I hope your year has started as well as mine!
Wes
Re: Hi and a question.
You have discovered my greatest concern in my resource program: when I get so full I am having to teach two different “classes” at sometimes widely differing grade levels within the same instructional period. I have never found a way to handle this that I feel good about. Something just has to give, we cannot split ourselves in half.
The real heart of the issue is that the school needs more staff, at the minimum an aide to work with the small group while you teach the large one, or to answer questions while you teach the other group.
Re: Hi and a question.
I agree that we need another teacher -at least a part-timer. Our class sizes are sitting at around 10 -some teachers have up to 13, but then they keep putting one more kid into each class; and its always a different subject. Most of the kids are with me for the curriculum, only a few are for study skills or tutoring with another class. I’ve thought about trying to combine the two subjects into a single class, but the problem is that every student I have in these split classes for history also takes English with me. So if I combined the two they’d have to do twice the English work, and still only get a partial focus on history. And since I don’t have a classroom set of textbooks for anything that is at an appropriate level I’m having to lesson plan in US History for two different books. My primary concern, though, is that I find some way to keep everyone busy while I float around the room. I don’t mind the multi-tasking myself, but the kids are getting tired of me not being able to answer questions “right now” and I can see the effect on focus when I’m not directly supervising something. Any tips or tricks for helping them feel like they can work alone without me holding their hand? If I can’t ge them confident enough to trust their work I’m gonna go nuts trying to keep two subjects straight in my head at once. Thanks,
Wes
Are you supporting your social studies students through someone else’s curriculum or do they come to you for Social Studies?
If they come to you for Social Studies, you can make your English curriculum more “social studies” and combine the two groups.
If they’re coming to you for support at the same time you’re supporting/teaching English, that’s hard because it’s impossible to do two things at once even if they think we can.
I’m a social studies teacher and if you asked me which is more important - social studies or language arts, I’d tell you language arts every time. The first thing any student needs to be able to do is read and write their language.
Good luck.