aberdeen | Jan. 4th, 2011

... my alternative class was a good idea.

I have a student who is still on level 3 writing. He's on level 3 writing because he hasn't produced any writing to speak of forever. He's in my classroom all day, this year, mostly because he had behavior issues with a lot of the other teachers in the past. He has organizational issues. They have difficulties with his organizational issues. He has explosive behaviors in response to... fairly reasonable expression of discontent. (Strangely, he has had no explosive behaviors with me, and has been able to verbalize the need for a time out, set a timer for himself and has started a list of coping skills he can use in difficult situations...)

Right. Anyway. He's still on level 3 writing. Base third grade, or what you would expect from someone who is able to string sentences together, but hasn't mastered paragraphs, yet.

This makes sense, if you only have 45 minutes to work with him, because he's spent most of the 45 minutes saying inside his head, "I can't" and rejecting any idea he might come up with. And then, the next day, when everyone else is moving on to another topic, or revising their work, well, he has nothing, and the frustration/embarrassment of having nothing when everyone else is moving on does not lend itself to success.

(No, I am not in any way familiar with this. Not at all. Nope.)

And, even with me, he's managed to avoid writing anything fictional - though I've gotten lots of narrative reports out of him for science, and a little bit for social studies.

But. And here's where I finally get back to the point about my alternative class.

Today. I told the kid that I wanted him to finish his writing level. That was /my/ goal, for him. He's been doing great in science, math, social studies, and reading, but I really wanted him to finish this writing level. I told him that he needed to write a story. (His portfolio for his level is complete except for the fictional story. Heck. His portfolio for the next two levels is complete, except for the fictional narrative.)

He started at 8:50. At 10:00, he had an idea for a topic. At 11:00, he'd fleshed out the idea and had sticky notes written for Character, Setting, Problem, and Solution. At 3:30, he had the first page written of what will, no doubt, be about 6 pages when he's finished.

It still needs a lot of revision and some editing (particularly for tense and number agreement, which is pretty typical around here), but here's a sample sentence he read to me:

Snapping on her sweater, she snatched up the pail and sped to the river.

Yup. There's a kid who needs to be taught basic sentence structure at the third grade level.

If my alternative class still existed, kids like this, who need time to process, would have the chance to succeed. They'd have the chance to stop thinking of themselves as failures when they can't accomplish in 30 minutes what they want to accomplish.

Feh! Ah, well. On the bright side, at least I'll get to read this story. I may even get permission to share it with you.