There are ebbs and flows with all of the children with whom I work. To me, it has been hard to find a student who constantly improves.
In some ways, these students are microcosms of us. Some mornings you get up and rock your workout, other days you sleep in. Some days you are incredibly mindful and patient with your friends and family, some days you wake up in a “mood,” and can’t shake it.
My point is that no matter the ebb and flow, there are little miracles each day. I am blessed to support a classroom of students with varying needs. One Kindergartner I have worked with this year came in with an iPad and Snap + Core on it. I am a huge believer in Aided Language Stimulation and between push-in lessons and amazing support from her teaching assistant, this youngster has made growth by this time of the year.
Every session is not a miracle though. I don’t walk away from each push-in or each time we walk down to my room and say “We are constantly growing.” I do, however, see those little flashes. Those flashes turn into fires and we still see growth by this time of the year.
My deeper point is that with each ebb and flow, I implore you not to lose sight of the overall change in a student.
I beg you to see the little miracles.
Embrace those miracles and see how they become the big changes in a day, a week, or a month.
The class I support has a few Kindergarten students and the teacher is fantastic at using songs, chants, and movement to really get early learning concepts “stuck” inside these student’s minds.
She uses KidsTV123, Have Fun Teaching, and Jack Hartmann to embed songs with learning concepts. The students then break out into 1:1 table work to reinforce concepts through matching, naming, and cut and paste activities. By this time of the year, students are counting to 20, know multiple sound/letter associations, are using the months of the year, associating those months with holidays, and making connections between letters and sounds in their names.
How do we make these connections in a student who presents as non-verbal at this time? We lean on Aided Language Stimulation of course!
Just the other day, we are going through the alphabet song and my student independently taps the letter “V” and the letter “A” for the names of her peers when asked.
A few minutes later, she independently taps “5” to answer a question.
No prompts. No cues. No multiple choice.
Real language in real time.
While I can write about this now, I say again that every session does not bring these results. There’s a lot of singing, a lot of modeling, and a lot of time invested. There’s incredible support from teaching assistants (sometimes they are our best friends when it comes to growing language and communication in our students with voice output devices).
But when it pays off, it’s fantastic.
