Thursday, February 16th

Blustery day makes for wild kids - today seemed to be the day of injuries, aches, and pains (and headaches for Mrs. Brasler and myself). It seemed a little more exhausting than usual, but I did notice how my lack of enthusiasm can easily rub off on them, so I changed my attitude pretty quick this morning.

I practiced reading with some of the kids this morning - a book titled "Recess Mess" that is a first grade reading level. Austin and Sophia each got a chance to read it with me, and then had to answer some comprehension questions about it. It's moments like those that I really get to reflect on how far they have come since I met them in August. Looking at it from that perspective really reminds me how rewarding this job is.

I was walking around the library with them and I was remembering fondly the time spent in the library each week when I was in elementary school. Books just fascinate me and I have such great memories of getting to choose a book each week to take home and read, and then be able to bring it back the next week and pick out a new one. I remember what it was like to get wrapped up in a book series and not want to check out anything other than those books for months at a time, or finding a good picture book that you really enjoyed but not being able to check it out two weeks in a row (so then you make sure to be the first one to grab it the week after). I saw a bunch of books in their library that I read when I was in elementary school and it made me smile thinking of how universal something like reading can be.

At the reading center today we tried something new - an increased focus on the letter of the week. This week's letter is O, so the students were given a selection of books they have already read to go through and read once more. But this time, after reading each page, they were to create a tally chart of how many upper- and lower-case o's they found. So this activity focused on not only reading, but letter recognition and math skills and counting as well. We've been working on tallying in math lessons, so it was nice to be able to cross reference it in another subject. We discussed how we had a lot of o's because it is a vowel and words use a lot of vowels, but we didn't have a lot of O's because there aren't a whole lot of words that we use that start with the letter o. I think we only found 2 O's in any of the books used in the whole lesson, but some kids got upwards of 45 o's all from one book. I think it was important that we used books the kids had already read, because it would have been too much to ask of them if they were given a new book they had never seen with a particular task to complete. They would be too excited to look at the new book and it would be a distraction from the real task. Also, using books they have already read on their own or in groups made it easier for them to read them by themselves a second time around.

After recess today I had to lead the majority of the class in a game of "Rhyming Bingo" while Mrs. Brasler did an assessment with the ELD students. Let's just say...that could have gone better. It showed that they all did have respect for me and that I was able to manage them, but everyone was a little confused in playing the game, and clean up time was when everything really fell apart. I think everyone was just a little too feisty with each other today. I'll stick to blaming the wind...