Observation Day!

Yesterday was the 100th day of school! I wasn't there to celebrate with them, but I was told (multiple times) that "Zero the Hero" definitely came to visit...

Today was the day my advisor was coming to observe my classroom interactions and development as a future educator - I wasn't so nervous as to how I was going to do, but I was nervous about whether or not the kids were going to behave.

Right off the bat I was presented with a choice this morning - I could either run the center where I oversaw the completion of a counting by 10s worksheet that involved coloring, cutting, and gluing; or I could lead the center exploring the flow and properties of water. Clearly, for observational purposes, the worksheet would have been the obvious choice. Naturally, I picked the second. The water center would be challenging, yes, but also more exciting and far more rewarding. I was willing to risk a potential disaster during the observation time in order to do something that felt more meaningful and had equal amounts of potential to be a great lesson. And what kind of future teacher would I be if I stepped down from a challenge?!

It went great - although a little trying at times because I've been losing my voice over the past couple of days - and my advisor was very entertained and impressed. And the kids were so well behaved! I was so proud of them; not that science centers are ever very hard for them to get engaged in. :)  We had three tasks to complete in 20 minutes for each center:
1) Discuss water as a liquid that takes the shape of it's container and has flow. Answer the question, "What is flow?"
2) Demonstrate a fountain by pouring water into a cup that had straws inserted on both sides and discuss what was happening and why.
3) Created a trough/water fall out of clay with walls to keep the water in that could be successfully used to pour water down and into a bowl. Discuss how to create the trough and why some things worked and some things didn't.
Tables were wet from missing bowls when pouring water, hands were sticky from mixing the clay with water, but every single student had the opportunity to ask and answer questions and make connections. A couple times we got off on more involved topics because of student imposed questions - like what purpose a dam serves in a river and how we can demonstrate it with our troughs, or how filters can create flow for pools of water (fish tanks, swimming pools, etc).

This is real life stuff, guys. And these kindergarteners get it. I am always so impressed and excited for them. I think their excitement is contagious...

**Side note, I did go back and add some pictures today - I'm working on trying to use different mediums, and since I have to take pictures anyway, why not include some on here?**

Murphy's Law

Yes. Today was one of those days - what could go wrong did go wrong, and by the time I got in the car to drive home, I felt like I had been there for days.

Here is how the morning was supposed to go:
Morning routine
Library time
Room 4 Students leave and the others do pacer testing
Tracing shadows
Recess
Pacer Test for Room 4 students
Computer lab at 11:30am and I go home.

A pretty typical Thursday, with the exception of the Pacer Testing, because that's something we only do once a month. Pacer testing is a way of measuring physical development - each month the kids have to listen to this CD and run from one line to another in a set amount of time. They continue to do this and I keep track of how many laps they can make before they get to tired to make any more.

Anyway, this is how the day really went:
Morning routine
Library time
Room 4 students leave and Boom Box for Pacer test won't work, so I lead Shadow Tracing while Mrs. Brasler goes to find another one.
Ryan barfs all over his shadow, himself, and Austin K, who had been on the ground tracing the shadow.
Mrs. Brasler has to take them to the nurse. Still no boom box.
Improvisational game of follow the leader (away from the barf), until Mrs. Brasler comes back.
Back up plan - I lead a center of Groundhog Day related worksheets and drawings. Mrs. Brasler takes the other half outside to listen to a book on tape.
Recess - Lizzeth's finger ends up reopening a cut on her finger and freaks out about blood.
Pacer test for ALL Room 3 students
Everyone is late to computer lab.
I leave at 12pm

The good things? I gave Lizzeth an AR test this morning and she got 4 out of 5 questions correct! Then we went back and read the book again, but together with her reading the words she had memorized or could sound out and me filling in the blanks. And...I got these yellow flowers.

:)

Tuesday, January 31st

I'm going to start off by saying that center rotation was absolutely not the highlight of my day yesterday. We were practicing counting out 100 objects and talking about how we could split it up in different ways (2 groups of 50, 4 groups of 25, 5 groups of 20), and while I'm sure it was good exposure for them and they had fun...it was not the most enjoyable for me. Trying to get 6 kindergarteners at once to avidly keep track of 100 things when a good portion of them can't count passed thirty was a little on the challenging side and not all together thrilling. But I suppose it was a good illustration of how sometimes, as a teacher, you have to do things you don't like doing because it's something the students need to know or need to be aware of. All I have to say to that right now is blah blah blah. :P

The more intriguing part of my day came from some discussions with one of the little munchkins named Lizzeth. She's always stuck out to me as a bigger personality in the classroom, not as in loud and attention-drawing, but as in eager and willing to learn and improve. She is an ELD student, so four times a week she spends time in Room 4, with all the other ELD children to work on their English language skills.

Recently, she's been inquiring a lot about why she has to go to Room 4. She absolutely does not like it - Mrs. Brasler confided in me that Lizzeth has said she doesn't like missing the things in Room 3 while she is gone. She has even told Mrs. Brasler that she wants to come in during morning recess before school starts to do the activities she missed the day before while she was in Room 4.

So she sat next to me as I filed papers in Friday Folders yesterday morning, creating a cat by cutting and tearing that she had missed on Monday. Other students were in the room at the computers taking AR Reading Comprehension tests. I noticed she was watching them and not paying much attention to her cat. I asked her what she was looking at and she looked back at me and said, "I want to take AR tests too."

My heart broke a little. Let me set this up. Typically, AR tests are a right afforded to the higher readers in the class, but other students may ask to do them as well. The way it works is, Mrs. Brasler puts a selected AR book in their Friday Folder that they take home and have their parents read to them (or read with them). Lizzeth's family doesn't speak English, and her speaking is a bit broken, which is why she is in the ELD program. Unfortunately, because the school system and the AR test program is centered around the English language, something like this is more of a challenge for her.

Thinking this through in my head as I looked back at her she said, "Miss Downing, I want to read." I smiled and looked at her and said, "You're learning! And you're getting better every day." She kept cutting her cat and I had a lightbulb moment. I said to her, "Maybe we can ask Mrs. Brasler if I can read you books in the morning and you can take an AR test on them. Does that sound like a good idea?" The smile that I got after that let me know that I had said the right thing. If a child wants to learn, you should never ever tell them that they can't.

With that being said, I've been thinking about changing my focus student. Originally, I was going to be working with Andrea, who had suffered from a crippling shyness at the beginning of the year, and still needs help with her communicating skills, but she has made huge leaps and bounds all on her own. And while I can help aid that along, there isn't much else I really do for her academically; it's mostly social. So while I will continue to engage her in conversations and help her learn to communicate her thoughts and ideas, I think I want to make Lizzeth my focus student. I recognize her desire to learn; and I know that she could easily fall into the group that loses that desire because she is limited by her native language.

So...to be continued.

A Difficult Calling

Let's say there are at least 17 ways of understanding reality, and, until we have learned all of them, we have only part of the truth. The point is that there are multiple perspectives on every issue, but most of us have learned only the "safe" or standard way of interpreting events and issues. A multicultural perspective does not operate on the principle of substituting one "truth" or perspective for another. Rather, it reflects on multiple and contradictory perspectives to understand reality more fully.

-Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education by Sonia Nieto & Patty Bode

Let's be real for a moment: the public education system in the United States is terrible. It's always been a known fact in the back of my mind, but it was something I was inclined to push away and pretend it wasn't so. Why did I do that? Because that's what I was taught to do in the public school system! You see, it's a never ending cycle. In school, we are taught to accept the information give to us as 100% truth with no other way of looking at it, and if it doesn't fit into that ethnocentric perspective...we just push it aside. Most of the teachers, with a few wonderful exceptions, that the average child will have in public education have also gone through the system; and they are therefore satisfied with teaching the same way. 

So why not go into a private school instead? Because I want to change it. I know that I can't change the field all on my own, it is a massive institution. But I can start with my class, and I can talk to other teachers and organizations...and in my class, I can make an attempt to change the way kids look at things. I am a product of this flawed education system, but I'm hoping my refusal to accept that I have to teach the same was I was taught is the first step in making a change. I'm conscious of it; I know that I don't want to teach the stereotypical view of looking at the academic subjects. I know that children learn differently and come from different backgrounds with different experiences, and that learning from past experiences is the best way to learn. 

When I started reading this text, it was a little shocking. It may have been the first time I've really questioned my decision to go into teaching. But you know what happened when I questioned my choice? I had answers for my own questions, answers like the things that I've just said. Will it be a huge challenge? Yes. Will it be hard? Yes. Will I be unsuccessful sometimes? Yes. But trying is better than not doing anything at all. And eventually, if I try enough and learn what works and what doesn't work, I will improve. And improving is endless.

Thursday, January 26th

I swear I have other interesting things to say about education and teaching and the like...but as usual, school is eating up my life right now. So until I get some more free time on my hands, sticking to the weekly journals.

Today was a pretty interesting day - I got to start by testing some of the students on their letter and number recognition, their knowledge of letter sounds, and their ability to recognize high frequency words. The students who I assessed were ones that had previously scored low, and they were being tested again since we are now officially half way through the school year. Wow...time went so fast! But I love doing things like this with them, where I can see how much they've progressed. My focus student, Andrea, went from being so shy and insecure to being able to correctly identify all letters and their sounds, numbers, and high frequency words.

A lot of the kids in that group are the ELD students, and it was interesting to observe their improvements and how they were similar. When learning letters and their sounds in room three, we have a Letter of the Week that corresponds with an animal and a motion to help remember the letter. For example, "s" is Sammy Snake, and you slither your hand like a snake while making a "sssss" sound. The ELD children seemed to rely more heavily on the motions and animal names when remembering letters during the assessment. The native English speakers did it on a couple of the more difficult letters, or I did the motion and said the animal to help remind them, but all ELD students did the motions and named the animals on at least 75% of their letters. It's interesting how the visuals can be such a trigger for their memories and allow them to better grasp a concept.

During Reading Workshop today, I got to read a book to the group of students as they followed along, instructed to look for high frequency words while listening ("a," "the," "have," "like," etc.). The book was called Library Mouse, and it was about a little mouse named Sam that lived in the library, but only came out at night when their were no humans around to see him. When he did come out he would read and read and get lost in the worlds of books. Eventually, he decided he wanted to write his own book, so he did and he put it in the bookshelf for the children to find in the morning. He did this three times before the librarian left him a note, asking if they could have a Meet the Author day, since no one knew who he was. Instead of allowing the students to meet him (he was too nervous!), he created a "Meet the Author" box with a mirror in it, so each child would look in and see their own face. He also made a bunch of blank books and left sharpened pencils to encourage each student to write their own story. All the students began to write and filled up a whole shelf in the library with stories they had written about things they knew.

I followed this up with a chance for the students to go through the book and find which page was their favorite page in the book and explain why it was their favorite. I got a variety of responses from, "Because Sam just looks so cute and chubby!" to "I just really like how the author illustrated this page and showed everything that was going on," and "Because all the children got to write their own book just like Sam!"  We then talked about if they would like to write a book someday, and what they would write about; most of them chose something that they are really interested in right now (fairy tales, horses, volcanoes, science, ghost stories).

I absolutely love getting to read to them. I think the power of listening to a book being read to you incomparable; I still get completely enthralled and will tune out everything except the story if I hear someone reading something out loud.

This was a perfect book for today because, after weeks of waiting and proving that they were responsible enough, Room 3 students got to borrow their first book from the school library. They were so excited to get to look at their books that Mrs. B had to set aside time later in the afternoon with the promise that they would get some quiet time to spend with their book of choice. :)

Tuesday, January 24th

Let's start this off with the "Little Kid Quote of the Day," shall we?

Walking around at recess, Kimberly came up to me and said, "Miss Downing! Fabian pushed me!" Fabian came running up shortly after her and I said, "Did you push her?" And he said, "Miss Downing. Kimberly broke my heart." Trying not to laugh, I asked if she had pushed him in the chest or if it was like an inside hurt. He looked at me dumbfounded and said, "Well I'm sad!" The levels of cuteness were just too high; kids really do say the funniest things.

Today was Science Center day...with magnets! Again...the look of utter amazement on all their little faces was the best part. We related it to last week's discussion on force, and how magnetic force is an invisible pull on metal objects. We talked about how magnetic force can be so strong that it can work through things that aren't magnetic; and illustrated it by putting two decent magnets on each side of their hands and seeing how they stayed in place because the magnet pull was strong enough to go through their hand. Then we talked about how all magnets have a North Pole ("like where Santa lives") and a South Pole ("like where the penguins live") and how they are attracted to their opposite ("North and South want to be friends"). When you try and put a South Pole with a South Pole, they don't like that and they repel. They got to put a magnet on their hand and put a repelling one underneath and watch the magnet on their hand roll over.

In case you weren't aware, this stuff is better than magic. They get to play with it on their own tomorrow and they are SO excited. And once again, I was just floored at their abilities to relate it to things in their own lives - magnets on the refrigerator, things they'd seen in TV shows and movies, toy trains that they have at home... And once again, it was applicable to ALL of them. They were all interested and excited and proud of the fact that they could work with these magnets and produce the effects that I was asking them to. Ashley, one of our ELD students with the most severe struggles, was communicating and excited to be learning something - a rare and heartwarming sight for me in her classroom behaviors.

Today was the first day I had to walk a child to the office who was being overly disruptive in class. Mrs. B was very fair in the opportunities she gave him to improve his behavior, and it was only after a sequence of disciplinary that he found himself being marched to the front office. He was first given a warning, then asked to leave the carpet area, then the classroom, and then to the office. He obviously wasn't very happy about it by the time he wound up in the office, but I explained to him that he wasn't bad, but they way he was behaving was unacceptable and disruptive to all of his learning friends in Room 3. He ended up losing his recess after some inappropriate behavior on the playground...but this isn't a normal thing for him. Makes you wonder what might be going on that is different in his typical routine...

Thursday should be a normal day...but coming up, we have my birthday and Valentine's day that will be spent in Room 3. Stay tuned!

Last Thursday

I'm a little behind - I should preface this post with saying I am supposed to keep a journal each day that I spend in my kindergarten classroom. I'm using this blog to post it on, and I will edit as necessary to compile it into the journal that I will turn in for my credits. Obviously, I do more than post about my weekly experiences on here, but I have to do that part for school, and it's relevant to this blog.

The posts that are going to be used for this journal are going to be titled by the date that I spent in the classroom. For example, if I had written this post on Thursday like I was supposed to, it would be titled: "Thursday, January 19th." These might not always be very in depth, as I'm just supposed to write about what I did that day; and let's be honest, although every day in a kindergarten class is quite the adventure, some are more distinguishable than others.

Thursday's are my more mellow days in Room Three. It's the day that most of the ELD students spend the morning in Room 4 with all of the other kindergarten ELD students doing language enrichment activities, so our class size is about 18 instead of the usual 27 (Yes, you did the math right, we have 9 ELD students in our room). So I spend the first hour/hour and a half doing classroom prep work with Mrs. B. before the kids come in at 8:45, filling papers in their Friday folders, and prepping activities that the kids will be doing later in the semester (this last week I was cutting out 100 masks for the 100th day of school - hence the sliced finger).

After the morning routine including singing the weekly song, talking about the letter of the week, and completing the calendar activities, they all go to the library. This Thursday, they all got their last sticker on their school library card, which means they are now able to borrow books to take home. They are all very excited about this new responsibility - it was all they talked about all week ("Miss Downing, guess what?! This week I get my third sticker and that means I can borrow books to take to my house!"). While they are gone I finish up all my quiet work and set up the classroom for Reading Workshops that we start when they come back.

I lead a group of about 6 for a "I Can Read" type book - a lot of repetitive sentences and high frequency words (can, like, have, my, etc.) and pictures that match the words. This week's main book was "Objects All Around." It was describing that pretty much anything is considered and object; we would read a page together and discuss the picture for comprehension purposes. Some words were a little difficult for them, especially for the ones who haven't quite mastered the art of sounding out a word. It's challenging in a setting like that to get the fast readers to slow down and stay with the group - they're so eager to get through as quickly as they can. I think the point of slowing them down is to make sure they are understanding what they read; but possibly also to help the slower learners gain some confidence. I've played around with having each student read their own page with my help - I kind of like that better so far. That way, when a slower reader has trouble with a word on their page, a quicker reader can help them with the tricky words.

The hardest part is keeping them focused. They see something that reminds them of a story or something that happened in their life and they want to tell you all about it; I want to listen because I think their abilities to communicate are a vital part of their education, but when there are certain things that have to get done, it's hard to take the time to deviate to listen to them. They all just want so much attention all the time, but more often than not, I have to remind them to save their stories to tell me at recess (and of course, it's usually long forgotten by then). And if their own stories aren't enough of a distraction, some of them just get so silly when they get to do small group activities with me! I haven't quite figured out why that is, but I'm hoping the more we do it, the more they will see that Reading Workshop is a time to focus on reading, not on trying to make Miss Downing think you're funny.

After Reading Workshop, the ELD students return and we go to recess where I open snacks, tie shoes, break up arguments, and hear stories about everything I've missed in their lives. You see personalities so much more at recess.

Quiet time to finish unfinished work comes after recess and then they head off to the computer lab - I usually go with them to help with log-ins for the students that aren't great at number/letter recognition yet. This Thursday they had to take a little Fruits/Vegetables survey that big buddies helped them with, but normally they do a reading and/or math program that is supposed to be supplemental to classroom activities. Once they are all there and logged in, I jet off and head back to school for Spanish class.

Well this ended up being significantly longer than I planned on, but well...there ya have it! I'm going to make some solid attempts to start writing the afternoon after I'm at Room Three, instead of days later. But expect other posts in between that...not related to my actual classroom time. :)