Another Last Day

 That is a wrap on the 2023-2024 school year. 

I spent this year at Central Florida Christian Academy.  The school is associated with Church at the Cross; a fitting name since the cross in the courtyard is 189 feet high (same as Cinderella's Castle at the Magic Kingdom).  

PICTURE FROM SCHOOL'S FACEBOOK

PICTURE FROM WEBSITE OF ANDREW PLATT STUCCO AND PLASTERING , INC

 I had an amazing and wonderful year!  It is for sure in top 5 of my teaching career.

  It didn't start out that way as, for the first few weeks, I had a student who was dealing with some anger issues.  As a teacher, you want to be able to help every child, but unfortunately it didn't go that way. His method of coping with his anger was being physically aggressive with the other students.  It got the point where he had to be by my side every minute.  He could not sit with the others at lunch, had to walk next to me instead of in the line, could not take part in recess, and could also not take part in specials such as art, PE, and STEM.  Being a private school, we did not have a counselor to help him and  we were working with a non-sustainable solution.  We had to let him go.   

The rest of the year was excellent and the students made it a joy to be there everyday!  They had their moments, but overall they played well together and most of all they loved to learn and willingly stepped up to every challenge I gave them. 

                                      MATH

In Math, they wowed me with their number sentences. 

Taken in December

Taken in May

Pretty impressive for 7 and 8 year-olds.  This is an ongoing process that starts with number sense.  The know their multiplication facts through song and so I teach them how to multiply across 0's and the order of operations. In the first picture, they were connecting their knowledge of counting quarters and relating it to multiplication.  I also taught them to do double-digit by double-digit multiplication using the box, expanded form, and multiplication across 0's. 

My success in teaching Math comes from creating an accepting, relaxing, and non-stressful environment and by introducing skills and benchmarks early so that by the time they encounter them in the curriculum, they are proficient.  Most of my students will tell you that Math is their favorite subject. I didn't feel nearly as successful this year; the two 40-minute specials a day took a chunk out of the time I usually spent teaching Math.  

                                  READING

Most of the kids entered with a good reading base. The first fluency read I did (August) resulted in a class average of 72 words per minute.  The year ended with an average of 150 words per minute.  This is well above the national normed reference of 100 words per minute for Spring of 2nd grade.  ALL of them ended the year reading over 100 words per minute.  

Fluency is a very important skill in reading because without it, a student will struggle with understanding what they are reading.  Comprehension is an important part of reading as well as prosody. They all come in reading like robots (normal for their age) and it takes a lot of work to get them to understand character identification and situational awareness so they are able to read with the proper tone, intonation, and feeling.  This Spring we read Because of Winn Dixie and I could hear the growth through the novel reading.  Toward the end, I rarely had to tell to think about the feelings of the character, think about what the situation was, and to read appropriately.  

As a side note, after we read the book, we watched the movie and it was so funny to see the kids react with surprise and glee as each character was introduced.  

This summer I am hoping to get some hours at Huntington and will also be teaching summer school at my old school for the last three weeks. I also what to get some online professional development classes done through the Bob Jones website.  

I can't believe it's been a year (June 5) since this, 

 One year later and I am healthy and have have clear skin thanks to Methotrexate.