November 12 Experiences

For the first part of the experience this week, Tim showed us how he makes
student schedules, as it was anticipated that his school would be going back to virtual
learning soon, so the schedules needed to be updated. Schedule making is no easy
task. Tim must make sure all the times are met and that every student gets the
additional adult support that is listed in their IEP. Even though most students will be
going virtual for the whole day, some students who have documented needs will still
come into school at certain times. I thought this was very interesting, because even in
the midst of a pandemic, Tim and his fellow teachers are still ensuring that their
students’ are receiving the help that will work best for them, even if it means coming into
the school building.
When students went from virtual to in person classes towards the beginning of
the school year, Tim tried to anticipate which students would struggle with the
adjustment. Those students got Extended School Year in their IEP. This allowed them
to start coming back to school earlier than other students, so they could gradually come
back to in person classes. I never realized that options like that were available through
an IEP.

For the second part of the experience, Tim worked with a fifth grade writing class
on Zoom. The students were researching information about specific animals that would
later be used to write a paper. This Zoom call started with the entire general education
class. The teacher of this class used a paper about bulldogs as a mentor text. He made
sure his students understood that the goal of the paper is to inform and teach people
about the specific animals the students were researching. He added, “Teach someone
who doesn’t know anything, everything.” After this, the students Tim was meant to work
with were put into a breakout room with him. Tim met with each student, and told them
what their goal for work time was for the day. For example, he asked Grace to find ten
more facts, and he asked Jamika to work on copying and pasting her website next to
the information she found.
In addition to giving each child goals for the day, Tim also told them what they
were doing well. For example, he told Grace that she was doing a good job of citing her
websites. He also showed each child exactly what he wanted them to do if they needed
help. For example, he showed Jamika how to copy and paste website URLs into Google
Docs before he asked her to work on citing her sources for the day.
Sometimes, Tim would ask his students to share their screens. When TreNiece
was working on an aspect of the research, Tim asked to see her screen so that he could
watch her do it. This is important because it assures Tim that TreNiece understands and
that she will do it correctly.
After Tim talked with each student, the students had twelve minutes of work time.
 It was very nice to be able to watch Tim interact with his students, and to see the
methods he used to help them understand and to get their work done. He had a clear
plan for every student, and made his expectations clear to his students. He gave each
student one thing to work on at a time, which helped the students not get overwhelmed.