Special ed teachers

[Tuckins1]

I just started a new job as the resource teacher for an elementary school. I am having a hard time figuring out how to balance my time and the needs of my students. I currently have 9 students on my caseload, all of them LD in reading and some in math as well. The issue I am having is that I have students in all different grades and with different specific needs and goals. I have up to 4-5 students at a time sometimes, and I am wondering what do I do with the other students while I am working one on one with another? I can give them worksheets or something, but I feel that that is wasting their valuable time that could be spent in the regular ed room. I also know that some of them are so low in reading that they will not really get much work/reading done unless I am working with them. Do any of you work in a resource room? Any advice on activities to do with them? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Haven]

I''m not a special ed teacher, but I do work as a reading specialist two thirds of my day (I teach English the other third of the day.)

We have the same problem. As reading specialists, we pull kids out of a guided study hall to work with them one-on-one or in small groups. Our caseloads are HUGE, (24 to 28 kids for each of us), and we only have access to work with them for two hours per school day. SO, we compensate by creating long-term independent projects for each student. The projects are tailored to meet each student''s needs (e.g. increase fluency, silent reading comprehension, work on content-based vocabulary) and we created ways to track their independent work through logs, journal entries, goal sheets, etc.

It is not easy, and I really feel for you. My best recommendation is to create a few long-term, high-interest projects for the students to work on mostly independently. I know--AS IF you have the time. Yes, it''s going to take hours of your time outside of school, especially when you''re creating the projects, but if they''re tailored to their individual needs, they really do help the students.

Good luck! And bless you for all that you do.

 

[Tuckins1]

Thanks for your advice. I have a few writing projects that I would like to have everyone work on because they all have issues with grammar, fluency, sentence structure, spelling, etc... But, since they all have specific goals and objectives, I don''t always have time to get to my project because I have to work on other things as well. I also hate to give them even more work that is totally unrelated to anything that they are learning about... I hated it when my teachers all taught different stuff that didn''t seem to connect with any other subject. But, I think I will try to choose stories and writing projects that correspond with major units in each grade. It''s just hard to balance it all and have a good grip on what you are doing. (Especially as a brand new teacher!!!) I''m just chugging along. I feel a little better every day, so I think i''ll get it eventually.