I can’t believe that my CFE practicum is already over! It seems like just yesterday I was introduced to the students and now I’m saying good-bye to them. It has been such a unique experience for me because I was able to teach some of the students using the Orton-Gillingham approach. If it wasn’t for this opportunity, I would never have known about the 44 sounds and how incredibly useful this multi-sensory approach is for students who struggle with reading and writing.

Although this approach is a more explicit and direct way of teaching phonics, it is also very multi-modal and engaging for the students—this unique aspect of the Orton-Gillingham approach is extremely important because phonics can be very dry and boring for most kids! For example, Elspeth (my CFE coordinator) uses play dough to form different sounds or affixes; visuals to help students remember certain sounds; stories to make etymology of words more appealing; and games to help students with spelling or word recognition. All of these activities are just a glimpse of what goes on during her lessons at the 44 sounds studio.

One of the student and I created the root word, “form”, using play dough. This helps kids remember them!

I especially really enjoyed being here because it was more than just a tutoring place. It was a small community where all the tutors knew their students and their background in terms of their academic, social, and/or emotional struggles. Most parents were heavily involved in their child’s learning, which ultimately contributed to their child’s progress overall. It reaffirmed by strong belief that teachers need to know their students and develop a relationship with their family as well. This is the first step and the most important part of being a teacher.

I’ve gained a lot from 44 sounds—I now know how to carry on an Orton-Gillingham lesson and I’ve contributed a lot to lesson planning and resource development. Most importantly, I’ve learned a lot from Elspeth. Aside from being incredibly patient and kind, she is also a great teacher who knows how to empathize with all of her students. This has been a great journey for me, and I am so glad that I get to end my practicum experience here!

My 2^nd week at 44 sounds was a little bit more emotional and made me really reflect back on my practicum experiences as well as my future educational practices.

I came across a book called The Boy Who Learned Upside Down written by Christy Scatterella. It’s based on a true story—a story about Christy’s son, Alex, who has dyslexia and who never really liked going to school until he met Mrs. Sandy. Until now, I was only motivated by my commitment to help and support all students in the best way I can—whatever their learning needs may be—but I wasn’t really able to look at the world through the eyes of a student who struggled with a learning disability.

Although I was never a fan of pull-out programs (you’ll be amazed to see how quick and intuitive children are to judge other classmates for being “sent” to a different class), Alex receives a lot of support from his resource teacher, Mrs. Sandy. She tells him to do three things that take a lot of courage: tell yourself that “you can”, instead of “you can’t”; help someone else in need; and, finally, believe in yourself. Students like Alex need the support and encouragement more than anything else because they struggle with immense self-doubt and low self-esteem. For Alex, reading is almost impossible in the beginning because the S’s turn into snakes that slither away and the O’s become popcorns that pop out of the page. It’s not a matter or effort or laziness—they just need special and unique tools to learn differently.

This book really made me think about the widespread tendency for teachers to pull out students who need this extra support. Although the intention is great, I think that there is a better way than sending students out of the class. As opposed to the team-teaching model, the pull-out model forces students to miss out on the valuable class time to build stronger relationships with the teacher and their classmates. On the other hand, team-teaching allow students to belong in the regular classroom which helps them learn best as they also play valuable roles within the classroom community. During the school year, my group and I created a research package on the effects of pull-out classes on ELLs (English Language Learners). We realized that the effects didn’t only apply to ELLs but they were also strongly relevant to students with exceptional needs. According to Brownlie, Feniak, and Schnellert (2006), we found that the most effective method of approaching students with exceptional needs is to offer an ongoing program that is implemented within the classroom.

With strong collaboration and clear communication between the resource teachers and the core teachers, I believe that all students can benefit from the inclusive classroom values of team teaching! You can read more about the different teaching models here: https://prezi.com/xvodhoanfonx/tell-research-package-case-7/

My first week at 44 sounds was wonderful. Aside from not having to wake up at 6AM every morning, 44 sounds so far has been a pleasantly unique experience from the long practicum. At 44 sounds, tutors use the Orton-Gillinham approach to teach the 44 different sounds of the alphabet. The OG approach is a multi-sensory and multi-modal approach to teaching the different sounds through a more direct and explicit way. It helps students who struggle with reading and writing because they gradually become better are organizing, sorting, and recognizing different parts of the English language.

Students usually come during the afternoon—typically around 2PM—during or after school. Most of these students are diagnosed with a learning disability and many of them have dyslexia. Dyslexia is a term generally used to describe the lifelong condition where students struggle with processing written and spoken language. It wasn’t a surprise to learn that many of theses students suffer from mild levels of anxiety, low self-esteem issues, and frustration. However, as my week went by, I learned that every student was pretty much a typical kid—silly, curious, creative, and carefree. However, one aspect really stood out to me, and it was amazing to see that every single student was so eager and motivated to learn.

Prior to my CFE, I’ve never had experience working with students with exceptional needs. Nonetheless, it is without a doubt that it’s really important to see each child—labeled or not labeled—as having great potential in his or her learning. Every child has a different learning curve in his or her life and every student learns through different mediums. That’s why I think multi-modality and differentiated learning become key focuses in my teaching pedagogy—finding students’ interests and enlightening their sparks will be my most rewarding challenge as an educator.

I am really looking forward to the next two weeks during my stay here at 44 Sounds and I can’t wait to get to know the students even better. It’ll also be a very interesting experience to hopefully carry on one of the lessons myself!