The Po Show

Hangin' with the Third Grade

I spent an hour yesterday afternoon and 45 minutes this morning in Matthew's class. It was fun and funny and so sweet to see how very happy Matthew was that I came.

Yesterday was Math Workshop time, when the kids sit on the rug and go through exercises with the teacher. And OH MAN, you should see the interactive whiteboards they have in all the classrooms in our school now: http://www.gtcocalcomp.com/interwriteschoolboard.htm. These things are absolutely, freaking amazing! I love our school!!

This is Matthew's time to shine, in Math Workshop. He raises his hand at every question, confident he knows the answer. He *wants* to be called on, which is worlds away from how he used to feel in class. It was wonderful to see. The class went through some word problems, then went back to their desks to partner up and work on similar problems. I got to be Matthew's partner :). He finished his problems so quickly the teacher gave him a blank sheet to make up his own word problems. Since I was there to help him with spelling, he finished that up too.

At one point, his teacher stopped by to let me know that on the statewide math assessment that all the third graders took a few weeks ago, Matthew had gotten a perfect score. She laughingly said that he had assured her that he's always gotten perfect scores on math tests, though she tried to tell him that it was okay if someday he didn't get a perfect score.

This morning was English Language Arts time, which is Matthew's most challenging part of the day. The hardest academic area for him is writing and spelling. The class was working on listening and taking notes, so first the teacher read a short story, then she read it again and the class was supposed to take notes on what they heard. This was just way too difficult for Matthew, who got bogged down from the beginning trying to spell "jungle" (which was the setting of the story). After the teacher was finished reading, he was still frantically trying to write what had happened in the beginning of the story. I prompted him to stop and look at what the teacher was writing on the board, as she and the class went through bullet points of what had occurred in the story.

Matthew started to get very agitated, since he was frustrated that he hadn't been able to do the assignment. He stomped his feet a bit and growled a little in his throat, but when I put a hand on his shoulder, he stopped. I told him to just copy the bullet points the teacher was writing on the board. He furiously started writing without looking at his paper, and he was writing over what he had already written himself. I told him to look down at his paper while he was writing and he noticed what he had done. However, rather than getting more upset or trying to erase everything, he simply kept copying from the board.

This was amazing for him! The "old Matthew" would have thrown a fit, screamed or kept stamping his feet, would have crumpled the paper or threw it on the floor. He would have refused to continue with the assignment. But this "new Matthew" got it together and finished working, then put the paper into his folder when instructed to, along with the rest of the class. It was absolutely dazzling for me to see.

Then it was time for the parents to go, as the kids were going to go into their reading groups. Matthew has gone from reading absolutely nothing, except when forced to, to reading for hours for fun, this year. Talk about dazzling. He says it's because of the reading group, which is a group led by the inclusion teacher. Matthew has gained so much confidence in reading, in such a short time (I literally saw a change within two weeks). I don't know how much of this was medication-based, but the change definitely did coincide with an increase in his Ritalin dosage. In any event, it's wonderful.

So I've gotten what I wanted, what I pushed for. Matthew's had a good start to the school year. Far from perfect, but in comparison with the horrific starts he's had the last four years, it's cause for celebration!