DEAR (Drop everything and read)

Personally I feel developing students literacy and numeracy

skills is an essential part of a students development while at
school. This opinion is shared by the minister for education
Ruairi Quinn as he states that;
No child should leave school without having mastered these
skills to the best of their abilities. Literacy and numeracy skills
are crucial to a persons ability to develop fully as an individual,
to live a satisfying and rewarding life and to participate fully in
our society (Quinn, 2011).
To improve literacy skills of students in St.Tiernans College the
staff have included a class of dear time each week at
alternating times. I do agree with the implementation of D.E.A.R
time however I find myself questioning should the length of
each D.E.A.R session be a full thirty five minute class.
Personally I feel that the session should be slightly shorter as
students seemed to get disruptive towards the end of the
session due to the onset boredom. This is also back up by an
article I read suggests that each lesson should only last twenty
minutes for the same reasons (Gardner, 2006).
To conclude this matter I do agree that D.E.A.R time is of huge
benefit to students as they are developing essential life skills
while reading a topic of interest. However I do think that the
length of the sessions should be no more than twenty minutes
as students become disruptive in class due to simply being
bored.

Parent Teacher Meetings

During my time on teaching practice I was required to attend a
1st year parent teacher meetings and provide parents with
information about their children and provide suggestions for
future improvement. Because I was never involved in an
activity of this nature before my co-operating teacher also
present for these meetings.
In preparation for this we both meet and discussed how each
student had be preforming in class over the past number of
weeks. Discussion primarily revolved around behaviour,
assessment results, student participation and any specific areas
where students had difficulties. We than made notes for each
student to discuss with parents as they arrived.
Overall I felt the meeting went well however I was approached
by what could be described as a difficult parent. When the
parent in question arrived she seemed slightly animated. The
co-operating teacher and I than began to converse with the
women about their sons performance over the following weeks.
When on the subject of behaviour we outline that the student in
question had been quite disruptive and an improvement will be
needed for the future. This was meet by an aggressive
response by the women before she stormed out of the room.
On reflection perhaps it would have been best to insure the
women was clam before beginning the meeting. This could
have been done by making simple small talk with the lady or
making a positive gesture of offering a cup of tea.

Bibliography
Gardner, T. (2006). A Daily DEAR Program: Drop Everything,
and Read! Retrieved from Read Write Think:
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-
plans/daily-dear-program-drop-55.html
Quinn, R. (2011). Literacy and numeracy fo learning and life.
Retrieved from Education.ie:
https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Policy-
Reports/lit_num_strategy_full.pdf