The boys are back in town!

Oh yeah.

My boys are all back in town.

And it's all gone well. Mostly.

We were most concerned about two of the children that we hadn't had after a holiday before. Turns out they were fine, had been ill over the week away and were very affectionate and having a lovely day. They are both still suffering the after effects of being ill though and were very tired. They worked hard in the morning, but were floating by the afternoon. Once again, the TA's kept them going until hometime. And I ditched PE because 7 of my children had no kit and the tired child was in no fit state to do PE well.

Everyone else was fine. The only real issue today was that *all* of my children were noisy.
And 7 of them had no kit for PE.

7.

SEVEN out of the 28.

All of the ASD children had their kits. *nods* Routines have a place and purpose for all of us I think.

I can feel a post about that coming one of these days.

No new glasses

Now, it may not seem important to you that I have new glasses, or rather that I need them and they are not here. I went in on Wednesday for the appointment, the sunglasses are here, the ordinary glasses are not. I am as short sighted as the proverbial bat, (but with excellent hearing "I heard what you whispered Matthew and if you whisper anything like that again we shall be discussing it!") and having had the long and comprehensive eyetest, I apparently require new glasses. I made my choices, and here is where it does make the link between my world and the school world.

Not only have I chosen ones that are similar to that which I had before, I asked for them to be rushed in because I needed to go back to school wearing them. In a previous school, the child I had then who was ASD became unconsolable one day, for no reason that we could trace, until he stopped crying long enough to flap at my face to push my glasses firmly back onto my face because I had taken them off to clean them and changed my face.

Hence the plan to have new ones available for today, to go back after a week away with new ones, and hope to get away with it that way.

'Twas not to be.

Aside from that, I have planned for my IEP children but not for my class per se, because the Revised Framework splits the Literacy topics into phases. Now we spent 2 days on D&T at the end of last half term, so does this mean that I have to move straight to phase 3 (teaching phase 3 without required background knowledge, and a weeks holiday in between) do I teach the end of phase 2 (in which case they'll lose two days at the end of the topic) or do I trust my professional judgement and make it through to the end of the topic as best as my charges can manage?

What a silly idea the third one was. After all, I am teaching the niceties of non-fiction non-chronological report writing to children who struggle to read and write a sentence. Of course I should follow the government plan.

Argh! As they say.

Anyway, I had better get on. I have no idea how some of my children will be after a weeks holiday, some will have been with estranged parents ect which really upsets them, the ASD children will have had a change in routine, which will have upset them for a variety of reasons, and I know at least 2 of mine are on holiday. In term time. Grrr.

Laters.

*testing..... testing....... is this thing on?*

So this is my first official post about having children with ASD in my classroom, and suddenly I have nothing to say!

It's half term, and so whilst it may seem like all teachers do in the holidays is sit at home and play old Steps albums (although that may be just me!) we do actually spend a lot of time thinking about school. For instance, I have been in school today *and* yesterday, for 4 hours each day, working on things for my children.

Most of it was marking. :-(

I have a lovely class, who are very understanding of the wide varieties of children that we have in our midst. In my daily class I have 2 children with Global Development Delay and ASD as a secondary issue, and 3 who have a diagnosis of Aspergers with two of those three having ADHD as a secondary diagnosis. When we set for Numeracy and Literacy I lose 2 of the 3 children with Aspergers, as they are very high functioning in certain areas, and gain 1 with ASD, 4 with recieved understanding language problems, and a couple with behaviour issues. The majority of my set have a reading age below 5, (and they are all 7,8 or 9) and a fair smattering have dyslexia or dyscalcular issues as well.

Me myself and I? I have been teaching for (counts on fingers) 8 years, with a 2 year break in the middle to have the Number One Son. I've done supply in special schools, I've taught in an ERB school, (which I still consider the best way of doing things) and I've taught in mainstream. I've always had an interest in children with a diagnosis of ASD and I don't think we can do too much to ensure that their school life is as trauma free and as normal (whatever the heck that means!) as possible.

Anyway, I've rattled on enough and have to go and sew a Noah's Ark for a Christmas present for someone. I'll add to this when I'm sure it's working!

Laters.

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