I have been observing a student who is struggling in school for the past few classes. This student does have an IEP and is a lower level student in both math and reading. This student leaves the room for an hour a day to go to the special education classroom. This student can do much of the work that is given to her on her own, it just takes her longer. However, she is a bit lazy and wants someone else to do it for her. She does not try very hard and often turns in work that is uncompleted or asks the teacher or myself for "help". Her asking for help means she does not want it explained to her she wants it done for her. Which of course we do not do. I notice that as the day goes on she has more and more trouble completing her work. It is almost like she gets bored of being at school. This student is very socialable with the other students and seems to have friends in the class. This student has trouble reading outloud during stories, and the other students help her a lot. I thought this was very cool because they did not make fun of her at all, instead they tried to help her. This student seems to have low self esteem when it comees to school work, which I think is why she always wants help. She seems very unsure of herself and is constantly questioning herself. This student does get excited when she does understand somethin though. She was working on numberic patterns and when she finally got it she was so excited and proud of herself.
My goal is to get this child interested in learning in hopes of making it easier for her. I also want to help her improve her reading skills so that she can be more confident when reading in front of the class. My teacher has many different instructional activities that she is going to allow me to do with this student during class time.
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Excellent observations! One thing I've learned by having a Dyslexic son is that reading and writing are extremely cognitively demanding. Reading or writing for ten or fifteen minutes is exhausting for them. It may seem like they are being lazy but they are actually working very hard. It doesn't seem like it though because they are doing so much less than their peer. They do tend to avoid school related tasks because they are so hard. I'm not saying that you should do the work for them or let them avoid the tasks but maybe provide a structure where they can have lots of breaks and do something they really enjoy like play a game on the computer or listen to a book on tape.
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