Charles. I am so happy with the progress he is making the effort he is showing and this has taken weeks to get from him! This particular student is hands-down one of the laziest students I have ever worked with - but I have found out that he really liked working with scary stories and he likes to read aloud in class. Once I found out this strength, I used it to my advantage by frequently involving him in this activity because is good at it and praising him for doing so well. We also did a writing assignment and he was refusing to do the work more than writing a paragraph. I said, "Charles, you are smart and very capable of writing more than a paragraph. Let's see what we can work on together," and he scoffed immediately, laughed a little, and said, "smart... ha! yeah, right." There was the problem. I sat there, discussing all of his strengths as a student, and although he has weaknesses to, who doesn't?, we worked on his writing together. That was the pivotal moment I needed with him because for the rest of the class period, he would call me over and ask how his writing looked, and how he could improve it. He ended the assignment with a solid 3 paragraphs that, although had a few grammatical errors and needed to flow better, we could work on that later. That was a week ago from yesterday and all throughout this week, although it still takes major prompting sometimes, he gets his work done and his journals have even been improving in length. I have been writing back and forth with him a lot more, and he has even stopped by the classroom to say hello twice this week. I'm really hopeful that this will continue throughout the rest of the semester, and hopefully next semester when I'm gone, as well.
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