Just to show you what I'm dealing with...
AS many of you know, I am teaching the low 5th grade reading group. In answer to the question "What might Ochoa's example communicate to young girls of today?", I received this answer (typed exactly as it was written):
"u can bo inething if u sate are mand to it!"
The translation: "You can be anything if you set your mind to it!"
(Yes, this is a special ed student; the problem is that so is a third of my class. The rest are just regular ol' struggling readers.)
8 comments:
Wow - and I thought I had a few problem students!
I'm speechless. Texting and IMing has become extremely detrimental to grammar and spelling.
I tested Brent's class on the last 50 of the 100 sight words for 1st grade today, and there were some kids who got over HALF of them wrong. And yes, a few of them are clearly learning disabled, but many of them, I feel, just don't have time spent with them at home reading. That's heartbreaking to me. I'm sure it's the same with a lot of your struggling readers.
oh shit...does it make me special ed because i could read it?
My question is, with the reading/spelling level being this poor, how did these kids get passed onto 5th grade? I don't mean for that to be offensive to anyone, it just blows my mind that it's perfectly okay to pass a child who can't read at the level they should be able to.
Oh, crap, I missed where you said it was a special ed student's response, guess that gives me my answer. But still shouldn't there be a certain level of criteria met for every student, in order to pass onto the next grade? Seriously, there are way too many kids falling through the cracks in the school system because of this.
I'm totally with you, Nik! There's one girl in particular in Brent's class who comes to mind when you say this. While testing her, she throws out words that don't even start with the same letter or even have similar letters IN it. For her sake, she needs to be held back. It's not fair to push her along, only to have her fall further and further behind.
but at the same time, there are kids, who, quite frankly, would never get passed on (some of the special ed kids at least). Like NEVER. The school's general rule of thought on rentention these days is this: will it HELP or benefit the child to repeat that grade? In the case of this particular kid, no. Another year in 5th grade won't solve her problems.
That doesn't always work though. Let's say "Chris" is a smart kid but doesn't do his work. it could be argued that keeping him back wouldnt really help, since in theory he's smart enough. however, is it fair to pass him on if he didn't do the work?
Okay, but FOR THOSE KIDS who it wouldn't help to hold back, there HAS to be another solution. Because passing them to the next grade level won't help them, either. I mean, I understand that it won't help this girl you're talking about. And unfortunately, maybe her parents/guardians can't afford to send her somewhere other than public (or charter) schools. But she's just gonna get lost in the shuffle, and I *hate* that.
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