Shadowing Julia is school today.
Julia starts in Ms. K’s room (homeroom) and then travels downstairs to Ms. S’s room for math.
Math class: Julia works in a fifth grade group learning mode, mean, range and median. This is a core class and Julia must be in it. The intellectual concept is beyond her but her SE teacher sits with her slowly going through the procedures to find each number. There are two other girls at the same table and they ask the SE teacher questions. She is able to answer the questions and go back to Julia. The procedures include putting the numbers in order, adding them together and dividing. All are things that Julia needs to work on and that she is closer to doing -- although putting numbers in order is still hard for her. She and her SE teacher work with manipulatives to arrange numbers and then add them. Julia get distracted, stims some by rubbing fingers together or rubbing her head, and sometimes is no where near on task but Ms. H. perserveres. Julia is recaptured and gets on task again. It is hard for Julia to listen FIRST and then do a task. What is working here is that Julia is able to be included in the class and at the same time have a smaller lesson imbedded into the class. She is adding a series of numbers to find the average by adding and counting to get to 67. She checks it by using the calculator. It takes a long time but eventually she does it and feels that she is doing a good job.
The class does three changes before sitting down again. Upstairs to homeroom, downstairs for vision checking (Julia needs to see a doc. I’ve been noticing her squinting recently so this is not a surprise. She became a bit frustrated with the testing but got through it enough to know she needs more.) Upstairs to homeroom to read silently (Warrior Cat book) and then down the hall to Ms. F’s room for science. Julia needs some directing to lead the line back upstairs. She sits and reads without any problem at all. She does say some of the words out loud but quietly and without bothering her neighbors. There is a great range of reading material in the class -- adventure like Warrior Cats and Stranded, fantasy like Pegasus, nonfiction for history or science like Volcanos and other natural disasters, graphic novels like Bones.
Julia needs to be reminded to get her science notebook and at the first reminder she says, “later.” Ms. H. insists and Julia does it. I am expecting the transition from reading to science to be harder. Julia is given her “homework sheet” to fill is and then needs to shift to science before
Science: (9:20 am) Julia can participate in class but needs to be cued to stay on task over and over. She is concentrating on picking on her fingers, even getting distracted by them when she raises her hand. Mrs. F. cues Julia separately to find the page in her notebook for the experiment they are doing. The three others in her group begin to set up the experiment. Julia needs to be cued to look at their solution. Julia is asked about the experiment and she answers with something about Harry Potter. Ms. H is not able to get her on task -- she interrupts Julia over and over. I finally ask Julia what she is doing and for a moment she focuses on the experiment. Later, she shouts out about Harry Potter world when asked about the experiment.
I wonder what the optimal amount of time that Julia can concentrate on anything she is not interested in. Obviously, filtering a solution is of little interest to her. But she is not disruptive with disinterest. Ms. H asks her to put the gram pieces in order and she an engage in that with help. She needs help being a participant. Her group cues and asks her multiple times. She responds.
Julia needs to be pushed and prodded to move along. She doesn’t understand what is going on and her distraction increases. However, looking around the room, there is probably a good quarter of the class that is not engaged but they are socializing generalizing, not perseverating on their hands. By the end of the class, Julia is turned away from the teacher and the board where the lesson is focuses. Ms. H physically refocuses her and then asks her to leave the room to wash her hands. I am not sure whether the hand washing is because her hands are dirty or to try to refocus her, either way, she needs to be closely directed to do this.
Strings: Julia has trouble getting downstairs. Well, she gets down to the basement but wants to wait to go into the music room instead of going to the strings room. She insists to me that it is music where she belongs until Victoria, her aide for strings, comes to get her. She is very distracted as she gets her cello from the shelves, gets to her seat and opens her cello. She needs a lot of direction. Once the cello is out, Victoria reviews finger positions with Julia while the rest of the class gets settled. Julia does fine with this but balks when she is asked to go to the teacher to be tuned. She does it and is the last person tuned in class.
The music teacher asks to turn to page 12 and Julia has a hard time complying. She says she is a bad girl and stupid. She is getting loud and shouting out. This feels like an escalation from science class. Page 12 is way to hard for Julia. Admittedly we started later than the other kids. Julia was not bringing home assignments because she doesn’t being home assignments and I was waiting for direction. We really just got started with the book this week. We are on pages 6-7. Most of the kids are doing page 12 pretty well. Obviously this is a group that practices. Julia has settled down and is working on the measured assigned. She stops to work on the exercise that Martha (her cello teacher) assigned yesterday. Victoria is trying to explain something in terms of dinosaur claws, Julia will not accept what Victoria says. Instead,
The class is stretching, Julia cannot put her cello down and then doesn’t want to do the exercises. This is exactly what she needs! She talks out and makes noises instead of of moving. No one tries to make her do the exercises. I don’t blame them. Julia rather talk out than follow directions. This is behavior that drives me crazy.
When it is time to play the cello, Julia tries to do what the class does. The two lines of music are too hard for Julia to do slowly, quickly is impossible. Julia also does not understand connecting the measures yet. And yet, she tries with lots of help from Victoria.
When the class switches activities and works on bow hold with a pencil, Julia is resistant, goes back to making noises. After Victoria talks and talks to her, Julia is able to approximate the hold and does what she is asked. Julia notices a rash on her teacher’s skin and perseverates on that. Much of what she is doing in strings is directly opposite what her private cello teacher is telling her to do. This might be a problem for a typical child, for Julia I may be asking too much. Julia is supposed to be doing bow activities, instead she talks and talks about Harry Potter until Victoria becomes cross. The class is pretty loosely run and Julia seems to need more and more direction.
Using bow: 4, 5, 6,7 and the halloween song
I spent part of the art period talking to Ms. H, Julia’s SE teacher. I asked about SE theory. Should we be pressing Julia to extend her own skills or give her the broad range of exposure that typical students get. Ms. H is of the opinion that Julia needs the social piece of school so much that even if we could put more into her head by working more intensely academically that i would not serve her well in the long run. Likewise, she opined that Julia would do best in the middle school where most of the kids in her class go so that she will not have to begin all over again socially in sixth grade.
Art: Julia is focused and almost does what her teacher wants before she is asked. She takes suggestions and then goes beyond directions. She is working with clay.
During cleanup, Julia bossed her friend Amanda to do a better (harder) job cleaning the table. There will come a time when Julia will have to learn kindness and gentleness with her friends. Katie, the art teacher, lets Julia walk around the room as other kids are made to sit on the rug. I know that Julia is listening but she is being kind of spoiled here. When she goes to sit down, she sits in front close to the teacher.
After lunch, Julia is supposed to be with one of her aides, S, for reading. They are working on compression which Julia sorely needs. Julia would rather be working in the classroom on typing pal. She offers a bit of resistance but complies relatively quickly.
S begins by giving Julia some vocab words. Today, words that end in -tion. S explains term to Julia -- right now, irrigation -- much like I do at home. S asks Julia to sum up the the “story so far.” S is also working on idioms and expressions -- “healthy as an ox.” Julia is missing so many expressions that kids who are 12 have already picked up. S has Julia re-read something she read yesterday. She questions her constantly, pressing Julia to explain words and concepts and story development. I do this at times and have wondered if it helped. When S does it, it makes so much sense that this is good for Julia.
There are two periods of recess during the school day and for the second one, Julia is not at all happy going outside. She is less social this time although interestingly there are a few kids who come up to her and try to draw her into their groups.
After recess, Ms. H uses a very easy book to work on writing with Julia. I think Julia is filling out a review sheet on the story. She erases a lot which takes way too much time. Ms. H puts a 10 on top of the page for Julia to track her erasing. Gosh, I wish I could think of something else to draw her out of her compulsions. Julia doesn’t need someone to keep her on task but to keep her from spending her time erasing and redoing.
Something interesting: in the past Julia could be very sensitive whenever someone touched her. She could whine or yell or do something physical back. Julia’s desk is next to a boy’s and when the boy closed his desk top and grazed Julia’s elbow, she didn’t say a thing. I know that she can still do her old behavior at times, but there was a time when it was always.
Reading aloud: Julia is allowed to draw while Ms. K reads aloud. Amanda comes over to sit next to Julia to use Julia’s markers. Julia puts them between herself and Amanda and does not keep any track of what Amanda is using.
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