Another thing I’ve noticed this week — as a Resource Room teacher, we often dub this week “Hell Week” because we have assessments to give individually while the rest of the kids attempt to work independently which is usually quite difficult for most. Often times I ask the students to write a story but it is difficult because they have great difficulty writing words they don’t know how to spell. Because I’m working 1-on-1 with others, they either spend time feeling frustrated, unsure of themselves and/or twiddling their thumbs waiting for the right opportunity to interrupt the individual assessment to ask how to spell a word, to which I reply, “do your best” because I’m madly trying to complete 5+ assessments for each of the 20-24 kids on my list. THIS YEAR however, what I noticed was the silence…..kids wrote stories as usual, but did NOT ask for ANY help with the words….NOT ONE TIME, this whole week! Not on any of the tasks they completed independently AND, they stayed on task….I did very little reminding.

I have not read their stories or other work yet, but as they turned their work in, I noticed the LENGTH of their stories. I truly don’t know if they wrote focused stories or not yet, but even if they didn’t, it’s more attention to task than I’ve experienced with them yet and I’ve worked with these kids for over a year. NO ONE expressed frustration, disapproval of the tasks or anything other than compliance and patience. I attribute this difference to their ability to break down sounds in words….helping them be more independent and self-reliant. The best things are the scores, kids are demonstrating gains in phonemic awareness, letter sounds, and reading fluency! I love EBLI!!”