Day 9 - Nothing is earnt without a bit of hard work

I think one of the things that spring to my mind about one of my biggest accomplishments that people may not know, and I can't take all the glory in this as Sandy the TA in my class played just a major role in this success too.

This child struggled with all learning and a lot of support was put in place for him however, only small gains were being made.  We managed to work out a lot about this child such as he was getting up in the middle of the night to play on his PlayStation which led to him being exceptionally tired in class and sometimes falling asleep - mum was great, sorted that one out!  This was one of many that we had to get to the bottom of in order to get him moving.

The break through happened when we discovered that he saw the world like a comic strip.  We knew he enjoyed drawing and would do this all day if he could but we know this isn't the case.  He always had really out there ideas and could articulate them reasonably well with some muddled parts in there - fantastic sense of humour!  So, when we understood how he saw the world, we were then able to use this information to get him writing.

Comic book character by a student

All his writing/planning was done through a comic strip.  He first started off doing full comic strips, progressing to strips with writing under each slide, increasing words until it was no longer needed.  His spelling was an issue, so we got him to make up the words until he was able to spell them himself or was able to find them. 

The other barrier that we found was that because he wasn't able to keep his words on the line or in it, we started giving him blank pieces of paper and he was away.  His writing was amazing, he had all aspects that writing should have - beginning, middle, end.  To then developing his characters and setting.  His spelling and reading improved, his motivation for writing and all things English went up, and attitude towards school became positive.

I believe this is one of my accomplishments so far for my teaching career as we had a lot to overcome first in order to get to the bottom of what was going on, and of course I couldn't have done it without Sandy who was there to push him along.  We both still talk about him and wonder what is he doing now.

So, I suppose when reflecting upon accomplishments all the ones I can think of are the ones that I've worked the hardest for - but definitely worth it!