I had a wonderful lesson with my Special Ed class today. We’ve been working on building their vocabularies and using context clues. We reviewed some words from previous weeks, but then the kids got challenged with two completely unfamiliar words - “amiable” and “redundant.” They figured out what the words meant and were so into the challenge that I could barely write the words on the board, because they kept trying to sound them out and read them before I was done writing them.
I love that my Special Ed kids are willing to take risks in the classroom and aren’t afraid to make mistakes in front of me or each other. There are two completely illiterate students that are in the class by mistake, but I love that I’ve never heard any kid in that class call another “stupid” or “retarded.” We all have our challenges. Why hate? Regular ed students could learn a lot from Room 137.
My favorite sound bytes:
Rosetta: An example of a “trinket” is like…a piggy bank from the dollar store.
(This happens to be the exact same example I used last week when we discussed the word “trinket” and the numerous cheap knicknacks at the dollar store near the school. Yay, Rosetta)!
Darryl: [After using context clues to correctly guess what "amiable" means] I’m like a dictionary!
