Learn & Serve 12/8

Today was my last day of learn and serve and there were three students missing. These three students are three out of the four most distracting students. It was like working with a totally different class. They were all well behaved and calm. Today was only a half day so they may have had that to look forward to but I think that it had to do with the other negative influences being removed from the room. I went to learn and serve earlier than I usually do today so that I could finish my hours on time, and I really enjoyed what they were doing when I got to class. When I got to class they were all sitting on the rug, they were going over the date and the days of the week. They had to put on the board what today, yesterday and tomorrow would be. Then they had to tell us what the date was, the month and the year. Once they established that it was the eighth, they had to tell us the different ways to write, say, or show eight. They used picutres, written out, roman numerals, spanish, subtraction and addition sentences, and weight. Another thing that I noticed today was that a student with behavioral impairments is often times very influenced by their peers, the one student with extreme behavioral impairments that was in class today, was on the green on the traffic light all day and so proud of himself. Using discipline like the stop light is a good way to remind a child to keep on track and he gets very upset if you threaten or do move him up. At the end of the day he was so excited that his mom was going to give him a prize when he got home. My learn and serve teacher asked me if I would be interesting in attending a field trip with the class later in the year, I think that this would be a great experience, taking students with these disabilities into an unfamiliar environment may show me a different side to them and also show me how they adjust to change outside of their routine.