I have been a bad, bad blogger. But let's be honest, I knew this was going to happen as the semester wound down and project due dates approached. Let me back up a little bit...
Two weeks ago the kids were on spring break so I didn't see them. As much as I missed their smiling faces, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy sleeping in on Tuesday and Thursday. :)
I went this Tuesday (March 27th) and they were so excited to see me (as I was to see them)! They all had stories to tell me and things they needed to catch me up on...it was wonderful. I love feeling that I am someone they look forward to talking to. Morning routine was the usual, I helped on some math corrections for kids who didn't understand the lesson from the day before. Centers were really loud - lots of high energy. But mine was pretty quiet and everyone stayed pretty focused. We were making our own book titled "Graph it!" Working together with their cooperative learning group, they graphed different animals in a picture using bar graphs and answered some questions based on the information they saw in their graph. It was strange to think about these little five year olds doing graphing; I don't remember ever doing graphing when I was in kindergarten, but most of them didn't even have a hard time with it.
The most shocking part for me was how easily it came to some of our ELD students, particularly Ashley. She has a really hard time staying focused and getting things accomplished; she entered our class at the beginning of the year significantly farther behind developmentally than many other of the students. So while she has progressed, she will probably be repeating kindergarten. But she stayed really focused during the graphing activity - I don't know if the methodical/repetitive actions of the activity were helpful to her, or if it was just something that she truly understood. But she was understanding and progressing through it faster than some of the other kids. It brought a smile to my face and one to her's too; I think she needs to start feeling proud of herself and to build some confidence in her abilities.
It's hard to believe I only have 5 more weeks with them. I will be so sad to leave them when my school year is over and theirs still has another month. I wish I could be there to watch them be promoted to first grade; but I'll be in Costa Rica hopefully volunteering in a local elementary school in the area I will be studying in (new blogging adventures!).
I'm on spring break now so I will have a lot of blogging time. Not only will I be in Room 3 on Tuesday and Thursday, but I will be observing a first grade class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Busy week coming up, but I'm sure that it will be very enjoyable. :)
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