It has been very encouraging to see the student, who is diagnosed with selective mutism, starting to talk to more and more peers. Today he put up his hand to come up as a volunteer for one of the activities that I planned. Ever since we had chess in our classroom, he really enjoyed playing them. He was good at playing chess, too. I think that the chess really helped with opening up conversations with his peers. It is truly amazing how one item might have such significant effect on the students.

Today, one student asked me whether we were giving the graph a “name” or a “title” during my math class. I used these two words interchangeably without realizing that was causing confusions for my students. I was very happy that she asked, which probably helped many other students to clarify as well, and provided me the chance to correct myself. Thanks to that student, I learned that we as teachers should pick our words more thoughtfully, and make it as clear as possible for the students.

I also receive one valuable advice from my EA, who had known the students for many years. She suggested that instead of stressing myself out over these issues, I should first focus on the academics. It would take a long time to build a strong relationship with the students in order to provide all the help that they need. Acknowledging the student’s feeling is good but I should not expect to magically solve all the problems in a short period of time.

I had a day exploring the magic power of language in the classroom. Using sentences like “I invite you to think about…” when giving out instructions and “I really like how you …” to show that the student’s strength or improvement is acknowledged. I also tried to make sure that the students feel that their voices were heard and valued.

Instead of saying “You need to put away your book and go sit on the carpet”, I tried to say:

“Which Dog Man (the title of the book) are you reading”

“The first one”

“It would be cool if you use that (a toy he was holding) as the bookmark”

When I saw one student leaving the room saying “I hate gym”, instead of telling the student “You need to go back there and join the class”, I tried:

“Why don’t you like Gym”

“The whole stretching thing is lame”

“What are some sports or games you like to do”

“Skiddle (and other games)”

I also got valuable feedback from my school adviser about my wording. When I get too comfortable with the students and the classroom environment, I tend to talk in a casual way and use words such as “yea…” I tend to say that when students make a comment that isn’t so relevant to the content, or I did not know how to respond at that moment. Now I can see that “yea” can sometimes cause confusions for the students. It is not very professional, and it doesn’t really show a clear opinion towards the student’s comment.

One of the biggest takeaways of this week for me is being flexible. This week I used the student’s interests on Pokemon books as the lesson hook to introduce graphs and charts. Last week I observed two students playing a game with their Pokemon book. Each student picked three main types of Pokemon and did a frequency count on their chosen types to see whose Pokemon show up more often in the book.

Halfway through the lesson, I realize that most of the students did not understand my instruction on one of the activities. I explained to the students that if more than half of you didn’t understand the question, then I did a bad job at explaining so please let me try again. I tried explaining again, but quickly enough I realized that it was not just my explanation wasn’t clear; the students did not understand the concept behind it either. Needless to say, I had to drop my lesson plan halfway and go back to the basics.

It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to be in the classroom for long enough to know the students’ levels and the materials covered before. The teacher and I also had some miscommunications about the materials that were covered before, which resulted in the gap between my expectations and the students’ current level of understandings on graphs and charts.

After the Math class, I talked to my school teacher and asked for her suggestions. Despite the fact that the class did not go the way as I planned, she was still glad to see me trying new things and taking initiatives. We both agreed that now I would have a much better understanding of the students’ current mathematical levels. One suggestion that really resonated with me was to break down the lesson into smaller steps to set up the students for success. Sometimes I assume that the students would see the connections between different ideas, but in fact, it differs for everyone. Also, making my expectations clear to the students at the beginning of the class, so the students can have a better understanding of what they need to learn would really help.