The Honeymoon's Over

I was worried today.

I kind of feel like Power Teaching got off to a good start, but a few things are kind of stagnating now, and some things aren't getting better. The biggest issue is engagement. I don't always have everyone with Class-Yes, or even with Hands and Eyes (this is particularly bad; some students do it for like two seconds and then just space out again). I've tried stopping and doing scoreboard points, then having the class repeat it. This improves it a little in the short term, but I don't see general improvement yet. I'm just going to keep at that.

I also have some problem students. Two students, Timothy and Donald, are often talking or out of their seats, and will sometimes just smile about getting a "frowny" point on the scoreboard. They don't give me guff, so I'm not bothering with a guff counter, but I think these two might be ideal for trying out Independents with. I will be doing that for them soon, I think.

My other issue is with Eduardo, who I've blogged about before. Eduardo is one of my favorite students, while also driving me completely insane. He has a lot of social problems, and does not relate well to the other students. He also has great difficulty paying attention in class and following class routines. That said, he is very intelligent and generally has a great attitude. He has lots of difficulties with Power Teaching routines, but the most detrimental I think is that he just doesn't do partner sharing at all. He will either ignore his partner (he didn't even hear me do Teach-OK), talk extremely slowly (he's got a lot going on in his head and it's hard for him to get it out sometimes), or do playful gestures completely unrelated to the topic at hand. This is all to the great chagrin of Eduardo's poor partner Johnny.

With Eduardo I don't think putting him on Independents will help, as he will probably enjoy being on his own, and not even notice if the rest of the class gets a reward and he doesn't. One of Eduardo's biggest issues is that he doesn't realize that he's not fitting in or following the rules. To help him with this I'm going to go straight to the Bull's Eye game. This will give me a chance to mini-conference with him, and hopefully help him in reflecting on his own progress. I did it with him the first time today after school, and it went fairly smoothly. I still have to think of a reward for him though...