My final project is going great! I am very excited, because it is something that I feel I will be able to use in the future! After our discussion on class, I feel much more at ease- all my questions have been answered. I was nervous about teaching a lesson to the class, but I have begun to visualize what I will do. I am far from done working on the unit of instruction, because I have been going crazy doing other homework lately. I was crazily daring and stubborn enough to beg for my Practicum to be in the juvenile jail this semester, so in the last two weeks, I have found my head spinning trying to do the work and reports for that... without getting mugged by the convicts! :-) But in the next week, that will (hopefully) calm down, and I will once again be able to turn my attention to my final project. I have written two of the lesson plans, and am very excited about what I have planned so far. I still have to write the narrative of the unit, and present a lesson... then we are done! Yahoo!

You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?

I would think about other students in the class... are there any others that she would get along with? She may not like the class clown, because she has to fight for attention; foster children can often be more attention-hungry. So she may feel threatened by Josh. Or she may not understand the clown's immaturity and not know how to handle him.

If there aren't other students she can be grouped with (or if she often refuses to group work), give her an opportunity to fit in in the group. Help them to assign the necessary tasks to the group members. She may just need a push to get started. Giving her a leadership role may engage her better. If Josh is what is setting her off, think about speaking to him about holding his humor and commentary until after group time.