Week 4 - Paying Attention

This past week, my co-teaching partner and I got the advantageous opportunity to teach our very first, co-planned lesson about needs and wants to our kindergarteners. We administered a “pre-assessment” to determine students’ background knowledge about the topic and I thought it would be fairly simple; given a worksheet with 6 different pictures, the students were only to circle what they believed to be a “need”. As we walked around to collect the worksheets, I noticed one student (who I referred to before as “Ty”) did not circle anything. I asked her if she wanted to circle anything before she turned it in and she just smiled and turned, beginning to talk to the student next to her. I sighed and moved on, sad that she seemed to be distracted to the point of not following simple directions. Also, why did I not notice that she wasn’t participating when everyone else was busy circling their answers?


Ty is very behind and has a high chance of being retained and having to be in kindergarten next year. I believe one reason for this is her lack of attention during class. I sit next to Ty quite a bit during small group and whole group instruction, guiding and prompting her to keep up with the rest of the class. Ty is also still working on her potty training and does not know all of her letters and their sounds.  She is one of the smallest girls in the class and, when she is focused, she completes a majority of tasks. However, she doesn’t seem to understand simple directions and the teacher has considered having her tested for special education services.  I have so many questions about this student and don’t know which one I want to focus on but I just know that SHE is a puzzling student for me that I want to help best I can while I’m here.

While reading Tomlinson and Imbeau’s text, I couldn’t help but think of Ty. She needs special accommodations and differentiation in the classroom so she can get “caught up” and be able to engage in simple tasks, such as knowing which number we are working on during whole group. When I sit next to her, I notice her looking around the classroom, at other classmates, playing with things in her desk; everything else but looking and listening to the teacher. Ty cannot sit still, loves rocking back and forth in her chair, and is very quiet (unless talking about something she is confident enough to talk about). What I wonder is how can I harness this energy (kinesthetically) to her work in and out of the classroom? How can I get her to be more focused and actually listening to someone who is giving her directions? How can I get Ty to feel more confident in herself in a way that trickles into all aspects of her life (even outside of school)? Why is she not paying attention? Is she bored? Does she feel too far behind and thinks, “Why bother?” Is she really not interested or is there some sort of disorder interfering with her learning? What are truly effective behavior management strategies which can keep Ty self-regulated and on-task?