My son's school really relies on parent volunteers; and I volunteer once a week in my son's classroom for centers. Children rotate around through 3 centers and do math with me as one of the centers. I am not a trained MATH teacher but I am up to the task of second grade math as long as the kids are on a similar level as each other, abilitywise.
Most of the children have by now covered the second-grade curriculum and are working on some third-grade material, but there is one kid in the "low" group who can't even add easy numbers like 11+5. So when the other kids are working on patterns (+5, 15, +5, 15), for example, he is TOTALLY LOST.
I don't really know what this child's SPED diagnosis might be; and as a parent volunteer I know I'm not entitled to that information.
What I do know is that he is FAR behind. I have no idea how to teach kindergarten math facts. I'm not supplied with any special materials. I asked the teacher, and she said "Don't worry about him, he's just here for the exposure." In other words, he's in SPED most of the time, but he's mainstreamed in the classroom for the social aspect. And so he sat there and stared into space for most of the class time.
I felt SO BAD just ignoring him and working with the other kids; but I have no idea how to work with someone with profound deficits and I felt like I needed to cover the material with the kids who could reasonably get it (i.e. the rest of the class).
Having to make that choice bothers me. Why does this happen? What would you have done?