Education as a balanced diet

Wow, even though I had a three day weekend, I didn't post at all yet! That is what tons of homework will do to a person! At least I have gotten out for a few exercise classes (pilates yesterday and yoga this morning) which helps to reduce the stress!

On Friday we didn't have school because it was a state in service day for teachers in Oregon. We were not mandated to do any workshops, but I signed up to go see Howard Gardner (The King of Multiple Intelligences!) It was great to hear him talk about his most recent book Five Minds for the Future, but I actually enjoyed the presentation that followed his even more. When Mr. Gardner was finished we heard from Mike Geisen who was National Teacher of the Year in 2008. He is a middle school science teacher from Oregon and he was fantastic. Not only was he very engaging and funny, but he used this metaphor/analogy of education as a balanced diet that really resonated with me. He talked about how the packaged curricula are kind of like the meat and potatoes that address the standards and get it done, but that there are so many other things we can do with our students that extend the breadth of their "diet." The concept seemed really brilliant to me and just made so much sense. We don't want to feed our kids "fast food" (quick and easy) we want them to have a healthy balance. We don't want to push institutional food that is bland and unappealing, we really want to be chefs who serve interesting, tasty, and exciting food that they want to eat!

I went to the teacher store today and got some fun new activities that I want to use with my kiddos during choice time. I am also trying to brainstorm ideas of how to help my kiddos who are really struggling to write their letters and write their names. I got some jumbo traceable letters that kids can write on and then wipe off. I may incorporate them into my letter writing time for the few kiddos who still stare at me blankly when it's time to write letters. I am getting really motivated to really take on a few kiddos as my projects this year and rock their worlds with all they will learn.

I think both of these will make great choice time station activities. The letters on the matching board are kind of like sandpaper so that adds a nice tactile touch to it for kiddos who are struggling with the shapes of the letters. I can't wait to try these out tomorrow!

More Kinder Comedy

Today the same two students who worked with the missing initial sound stamps decided to do that activity again. The one little guy thought it was the funnest thing he ever did in his whole life, so it doesn't surprise me that he wanted to another crack at it.

Since they did the activity with me yesterday, I let them do it on their own today while I circulated and worked 1:1 with some students to check in with how they are coming along with their sounds and blending sounds together.

When I checked in with my stampers, one of the children had used the "sock" stamp. Since the initial sounds are missing, she had a picture of a sock and _ock stamped on her paper and she had written in a letter at the beginning of the word. Well...some of my kiddos are confusing the sound s makes with the sound c makes. She had expressed that confusion on this particular word. She thought that the letter c made the /s/ sound. I prompted her to think about what letter says /s/ without reading aloud the word she had created, but the other little smarty at the table boldly exclaimed, that says COCK (loudly).

During snack time today, we enjoyed apples and apple juice for our Aa snack (a is our letter of the week, so the student who is the star of the week brings in a snack for everyone that begins with our letter of the week). The apple juice came in cans and one little boy proudly showed me that he had opened his all by himself. He told me, "I did it because I have muscles."

Using my document camera today was fabulous! The kids did so much better with the activity because they were able to look at my model and copy what I was doing. It was great. There are a few who are really fascinated with the fact that they can see my hands when I move the materials around and a few who keep trying to put their hands under it, but for the most part it made for much better math lessons, which makes me really happy :0)

I have class tonight and I am hopeful I remembered to do all of my homework! So much to think about, so much to remember!

Funnies

Today was a better day. Once again the afternoon was fantastic and I even got to pull kids to have them practice sounds and words 1:1 with me during choice time. I find that I learn so much information working/talking 1:1 and because of that I HEART choice time. During my AM session, I didn't pull kids and instead I worked with 2 children on some initial sound games. The first was the sound trains where they pick a train mat that has a letter on it and find the picture cards with a matching initial sound. Then we did the initial sound stamps. Those are stamps with an image and all of the letters for the word except the first sound. The students stamped their papers and then practiced writing the letters that represented the missing sound. When it was time to clean up the little boy that I was working with was seriously over the top about what we did. He literally exclaimed more than 5 times that it was the funnest thing he ever did. LOVE IT!

Also, I read the story There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed Some Leaves to the AM group. I got it along with some other free books from Scholastic this month. Although the original song is funny, I have to say that the various books I have gotten based on the song from Scholastic are not my favorites. This one was pretty lame (according to me), but the kids enjoyed the repeating phrase, "I don't know why she swallowed the leaves, perhaps she'll sneeze." Of course I was trying to be very exciting and dramatic each time I exclaimed that I didn't know WHY she swallowed the leaves. About halfway through one little girl raised her hand (the same girl who had a marathon hand raise just to tell me my shoes were beautiful) and she said "because she hambre" (hambre means hungry in Spanish). She didn't get why I didn't get why the woman ate the leaves....she was hungry...duh! This little girl is just about the more precious thing out there! I love her comments.

I have class again tomorrow and I think I still have some homework to finish up...boo! The Biggest Loser is on tonight so I just may be multitasking! At least this week the snack shares are up and running so we should have some good snacks to munch on during both classes!


PS There is a big smile on my face because operation document camera was a success and I now have one to use in my classroom! I cannot wait to get started on using it for math because Kinder kiddos need good modeling and it has been very difficult to model all of the activities that require numerous manipulatives. I am anticipating some mesmerization (is that a word!?) tomorrow when they see how it works!

Sniff the flowers, blow out the candles

This morning, I had one of those days that made me want to put my head down on a desk and cry. My morning class had a very difficult time staying on task...not all of them--most of them are actually really on task and good at following rules and directions. There were a few kiddos however, that made the morning quite a struggle. I had to make my first negative parent called and tried to explain in my best Spanish that we are having some behavioral issues in the classroom that make it very challenging for me to teach. This child had a time out (missed PE while I retaught the lesson he ignored), then after another incident, I had a private talk with him in Spanish about behaving and following directions and he still kept it up. I don't like to have children miss recess or fun activities because I recognize that some kids need MORE activity than we are allowing which makes taking away opportunities for movement seem illogical in terms of getting them to settle down, so I am finding that I struggle with finding appropriate consequences. Sometimes I ask a child to leave the group and return when they are ready to follow directions, yet that sometimes backfires and the child just goes back to his/her seat and does nothing so they basically get out of the work. Because I am so limited on time, that makes holding students accountable a challenge. I sometimes feel like a failure in the consequences department because I have a hard time finding true consequences (which actually cause the undesired behavior to change). Yes, I can ask a child to leave carpet, but if they were not interested in what I was teaching in the first place, that is probably going to actually increase the probability they will misbehave in the future rather than decrease it. I also use choice time as leverage and indicate that students who make good choices earn their playtime, but some of the kids in my class receive ELD instruction in small groups and it is during this time that the rest of the students get play time (don't even get me started on how much I think that is not fair to the students who leave, but I cannot teach anything new while are gone, so choice time infused with learning games is pretty much the only option) so some kids don't get play time regardless of their behavioral choices. As a result, I lose the leverage of play time.

I am hopeful that a call home to parents will be a good start to recognizing there is a big problem and that we need to work together to help this kiddo understand the expectations in the classroom. I worry about how this parent may have perceived the call because I don't like to make negative calls prior to actually meeting the parent face to face. I did, however, feel it was necessary today. The afternoon seemed like a dream compared with the morning and I was thankful for a quieter, smaller group to spend the rest of the day with.

Our new math program has the kids drawing "scenes" in which they have to depict a certain number (like Anno's Counting Book). It is really interesting to evaluate these scenes because some children are SO much more advanced when it comes to drawing than others. We did our scene of 4 today and some kids showed 4 houses (like my model), others showed 4 people, and one showed 4 cars. Yet, there were also kids who just randomly scribbled like they have done for both the scene of 3 and the scene of 2. The idea is to draw a scene that incorporates the number in lots of different parts of the scene. For example an outdoor scene with 4 trees, 4 birds, 4 clouds, 4 flowers, and 4 kids playing. Sometimes I feel like such a failure when I look at certain things the kids do, but I try to keep in mind that some kids can be almost a year older than others in the same class and that a lot of things we do in Kindergarten are completely developmental and the skills will come in time with practice. I try not to be too hard on myself, especially when it comes to kids and their artwork. I do not want to imply that there is a right or wrong way to draw/make something because art is very subjective and I know that certain kids are just starting to use crayons and pencils.

Today was a good day for deep breaths and I am hopeful that tomorrow will be a better day! I try so hard to be positive and compliment the kiddos who are doing the right thing, yet it gets hard to be upbeat and positive when I feel like I am slowly losing my mind inside!

How was your day?

How do we learn?

For my principles and practices of learning class, we had to read an article about two metaphors that are applied to the process of learning. One is the acquisition metaphor where it is believed that people acquire knowledge and that knowledge is something that can be obtained. The other metaphor is the participation metaphor which explains that learning is more of a constructive process and that the learner has more of a role in building what they learn. The article makes the point that we cannot view learning in just one of these ways and that it truly is a combination of both. I feel like for most of my life, I experienced learning as an acquisition of knowledge, but I think this left me without understanding the true significance and value of what I learned and I also forgot a lot of what I learned throughout my schooling. Now that I am in a position where I go to class and learn about things that are pertinent to the job I do everyday, I think I am getting a little bit better at bringing myself into the learning and making it more about my own personal journey of learning. It's not just about collecting little bits of knowledge in order to have them, rather it's about incorporating those bits and changing yourself as a result of possessing them.

I have spent quite a bit of time doing homework this weekend and I am starting to get back in the groove of having school on top of work. I don't think I have ever felt this challenged before, but being in a doctoral program kind of takes it to a whole new level of rigor. I have met some great people in my new cohort and reconnected with some wonderful people that I "know" from last year.

Again, I feel like my posts here have been different lately...more of just a report on what I have been up to instead of really focused on teaching and what I am doing in the classroom. I have seen that not as many people are reading and commenting, so if you have something in mind that you would like to see more of, please let me know! I would love to connect you all to my classroom blog, yet I hesitate because I need to protect the privacy of my students. I would like to start including more posts about what we are doing in the classroom and possibly some examples of student work so stay tuned and bear with me as I usually don't feel this busy! I have something going on everyday after school this week and that makes me feel stressed. I am starting to crave pilates and yoga in the afternoons/evenings as a way to relax!

What do you do to relieve stress?

Brainstorming

As I sat in yet another class this morning (learning about all of the resources the university library has), I have to admit my mind started drifting a bit. We were learning about entering search terms and how to utilize all the bells and whistles to get the kind of info we are looking for, so I started thinking in terms of what topic I am really interested in, which is multicultural education. I always strive to think of ways to make my instruction more meaningful for my students and in order to do that I recognize that I need to know them better. I need to know about what kind of little people they are outside of school, what they enjoy doing, what makes them happy, what their hobbies are, what they like to eat, what they do with their families, who is in their families, who their pets are etc.

I thought of an idea that I think I am going to have my students do with their families sometime next weekend (since we have Friday off and a three day weekend!). I have heard about an activity before where students think of one word that begins with each letter of the alphabet pertaining to a particular topic. I thought it would be fun (and informative) if I had my students work with their families to create their own personal alphabet list. We use pictures with our Fast Track Phonics, so A is for apple, B is for bat and ball, C is for caterpillar etc. I like the little alliterative phrases that go with each, yet certain images like tower for t, probably don't resonate with kids as much as they could. When we discuss sounds and I give examples, I would much rather use words that truly have meaning for my students. How will I know what is meaningful to them? I will ask! I need to ask because I need to know.

So the task I will give them is to fill in one word for each letter of the alphabet that tells me something about them and their family. For example, I could say g for grandma, but some kids call their grandma Oma, so I could use that word for long o instead of a random word like "open." Certain words have more meaning. If I am asking families to do this, I want to provide them with a model and a way to get to know me better so here is what I came up with for my own personal alphabet

adidas
baking
connecticut
doctoral program
exercise
friends & family
germany
husband John
internet
jogging
kindergarten teacher
lattes
making a difference
no kids (yet)
oregon
pilates & peanut butter (couldn't choose!)
quilting
reading
speaking spanish
traveling
understanding other cultures
visiting interesting places
writing
x
yoga
zumba

This was fun for me to create, so I am hoping that families will have a fun time doing it too. It's actually a great way to reinforce the letters/sounds we have already been learning. This would be way too hard for my students to do alone, so it is a bit more of a parent project, but I kind of think it's more fun that having them fill out a questionnaire to tell me about their kids. Also, parents can talk about things kids like and then direct them where the word would fit instead of saying a sound and having the child come up with a word that starts with that sound. I really want this to be about the kids and families and sharing themselves with me. I figure I can always ask and hope that parents return them to me!