Third Lesson 3/15

I tried to think back to observations and how the teacher keeps the students on track. It seems that the child with Asperger's is often 'in his own world' and does come back to the group when asked a question. I spoke with the teacher about the two students in my group and the best way to keep them on track. She agreed with the questions for the one child, and suggested that I have him sit in a chair rather than on the floor with the group. This worked very well, and while I still lost his attention occasionally, he was much more on track. The other child apparently has a lot going on at home, and has been acting up. This was very good to know about the student! She suggested just letting her come sit near him if he is acting up. I still wonder if there was another way to handle this, but her presence very near him did help.
During the third lesson, we focused on the middle of stories, and in particular the actions that are necessary to keep the story moving and interesting. Again, we split into two groups and used a group interaction model. The students have been really engaged in the story since it is their own, however I still had some trouble attempting to combine the ideas of the boys and girls of the group. We came up with some compromises, but of course the attention of each side of the group was better when we were discussing and writing the part of the story they came up with (the girls wanted to write about a puppy; the boys about robots and spies). Somehow, we did come up with a story including both! The distractions were different during this lesson. The construction outside is very loud and often distracting to many of the students. In addition, I liked having two groups in the class, but I could see that the students in my group wanted to know what the other group was writing. When we were writing about the puppy, I could see one boy in particular trying to see what the other group was writing.
Overall, I think that this lesson went very well, and kept the students engaged. We were still able to focus in on the sequencing of the story and what has to come next. One student actually gave a suggestion for the story that did not make sense given prior sentences, so we were able to examine the sequence of the story to make sure it made sense in a smaller scope as well as throughout the entire story. This was a good addition to the lesson that came up during teaching.