Earth Over Time

I feel like I've gone through blogging withdrawal. I remembered to bring my camera home from school on Friday but left the USB cord at school, so I couldn't download any pics! :(

I don't use the icon for Over Time too often in Kinder because it's really a hard concept for them to grasp. They don't even understand what it means when they ask how long until lunchtime! It's a half-hour. How long is that? 30 minutes. How long is that? But I do throw it in every once in awhile because I do want to expose them to it.

This assignment was talking about the changes in the Earth Over Time. Past-Present-and a prediction of what the future holds.

Perspective of the Earth

We are finishing up our unit on Earth Day and I asked the kiddos to write from the Earth's perspective. How does it feel? What does it think about? The first one is my favorite answer:

If I was the Earth I like that it would tickle when they went walking on the grass. :)

I would feel bored because I would just look at the planets.

I would feel confused because an invisible man is spinning me.

I would feel bad because people don't care about me.

Sad because people keep leaving trash

I wish people wouldn't trash me so I'm not  dirty.

It's Not As Easy As It Looks

I think we are very lucky at our school because we are considered a magnet school and have 2 designated GT classes on each grade level K-2-one bilingual and one "regular". I like that the kids are identified and served early on because as we all know-they can certainly get bored easily and then it's all downhill from there. They do a number of performance assessments and projects with different products which I think really keep them challenged. We can lay that foundation in thinking skills early on and hopefully they will continue to build on them from year to year.

I tell you this because we were interviewing candidates for teaching positions. I really liked one until the candidate found out it was a GT class they said "oh, well that would be so great. It's so much easier to teach those kids-they already know everything". Part of me couldn't believe it, but part of me is used to it-I actually hear it a lot. We'll be in a meeting and they will be going over some initiative they are going to start-but it should be really easy for your kids. Why? Because they were tested and showed an innate ability? Lots of people have innate abilities but don't go anywhere if they aren't taught how to use them.

So I have some myths of being a GT teacher (and I'm not complaining at all mind you, I love what I do, I think it's a calling for me and wouldn't want to do anything else-just setting the record straight):

1) I have the whole spectrum of levels in my class. Even now in April I have a few kids who are not reading where they should be. I have kids who aren't able to add and subtract like the others. Some are even still struggling with writing phonetically. I struggle with differentiation just like everyone else, except I often have to also maintain activities for the very advanced students as well. I have 6 different reading groups to keep up with!

2) Just because they are bright doesn't mean they know anything academically. Our first lesson on compare and contrast gives me a whole crop of new gray hairs. I'll start reading a book and ask a basic recall question, call on 8 different students to find out none of them were actually listening. If you follow my blog at all, you may remember the leaf story. They found a leaf outside and were supposed to use it as part of their art--make it a necklace or a bridge. I got pages and pages of leaves turned into.....leaves. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to get them to think outside the box and some of them honestly never even get to that point despite our best efforts-which can be very frustrating as well.

3) I have to incorporate a whole GT curriculum on top of the regular curriculum. I have to find places to fit in things like multiple perspectives and ethics. I literally plan my units in a notebook with basically a bubble map-- starting with all the icons plus creativity plus critical thinking. Then I can add in the regular curriculum everyone else uses.

4) The expectations placed on you are higher. My kids are expected to score a grade equivalency of 1.4 on the Stanford testing-the 1st week of December!!!!! So I have 3 months (minus holidays and the 1st week of school) to get 5-year old kids who don't know letters and sounds on the first day to that level, where for everyone else it's K.4. When I post work in the hallway, people expect it to be perfect. My kids are learning the basics just like everyone else on the grade level.

5) We often get off-task. They ask so many questions and want to make connections-we often get a little sidetracked. One day we went from a bubble map on bats to questions on rabies to vaccinations to the dentist. If someone had walked in to evaluate me at that moment they would have wondered how we strayed so far from the bats in my lesson plans. Sometimes they ask questions I have to look up the answers to-but I feel if they ask, I owe them the answers.

6) We get our jobs because we are the better teachers. I know for a fact this isn't true because I could name 20 teachers at our school that are better than me (especially this year :). Parents often think this too and it's really just not true. I believe I have my position because I am good at challenging the kids and incorporating the GT curriculum. It's not an easy thing to do at an early childhood level but I just naturally think in icons, that's my strength :). Believe me, I could name off many weaknesses.

7) GT kids have less behavior issues to deal with. I can very emphatically tell you this is definitely a myth. I have boogerbears in my class just like anyone else. I have kids who won't put effort into their work, who talk in the hallway, who argue with you and who fight with each other--just like the other classes.

And believe me, I'm not saying we have it harder than other teachers, but I do think our jobs are harder than people perceive them to be.

Changing the Details

We talk about details often in stories, how they support the main idea, etc. I always like to an activity every once in awhile where we change the details of the story-does that change the main idea, what other details change because that one detail is different? Take a book like "Too Many Tamales" for example. That story could happen really on any holiday-some of the details of the story may change, but the main idea would still be intact.

We are reading Charlotte's Web right now. So I asked the students to think about the setting being a farm. What if we changed that and placed the story somewhere else? What would change?

"live behind seaweed" - they asked about hyphens after seeing it in print, they don't quite have it down yet. :)

Take place in a factory and play with robots.

In space-I love how Fern is upside-down! :)

In the park.

"In the restroom, the pig doesn't belong, sheep/cow doesn't belong, instead he plays with Fern in the sink".

In the city

In the arctic-she can see polar bears.

Earth Day Papier Mache

That sounds a little Seuss-ian! :) Well this is my least favorite art project to do because it's soooo messy and takes sooo long. You know they have to do the newspaper part and let it dry; they need to paint it and let it dry. When you have 24 kids, that's a lot to make space for-both the actual working on it and place to let it dry part. But, I think they should know about the medium and the messier they get, the more fun they are having right?

My favorite part was they kept referring to the part where you tie the balloon as it's "belly-button"! :) "I'm not going to cover up the belly-button", etc. They crack me up.

Poetry Celebration

Every April we have a Poetry Celebration. The kids dress up and parents are invited to come hear their child's original poems and enjoy finger sandwiches (the kids get a kick out of making those). What I loved about doing the activity is seeing how much the kids have grown in their writing since last time we did a class book at Thanksgiving. That's one of the things I just adore about teaching Kinder-they grow so much while they are with you. As much patience as it takes to teach writing at this stage, it feels like you actually did make a difference! Here are their poems; they could write about any topic they wanted to (when I cropped their names out, I cut off some of the last sentences):

I wish the sun is not so hot.

My friend and I talk. We write. We sing. We fight. Everyone should have a best friend.

I love this one because we read Langston Hughes "Life Ain't Been No Crystal Stair"-and she remembered that! "I want crystal stairs because they are magical. I feel like I belong. I dream about a life with crystal stairs".

Little Star. The star shines in the sky like a firefly. It is sad because it can't get away from the wind. So it just went away.

A Rhino. He ran in the castle and stole the crown. The queen sent him to jail. I feel bad.

The Life of a Rug - When you are a rug you get dirty. People stop and shake me. It's a mad life.

Ruby is my dog by the way. Do you think I might talk about her too much in class?

Flower, Flower. There was a flower bloom and one day a girl saw it. So she love her too much and keeped it, she keeped it.

My black shoes were clean but then I stepped in red rocks. My shoes were red. My mom got mad--very mad.

The spring day flashing, every day is ordinary but not spring. That is when kids have fun and run, run, run. (Doesn't that sound like a real poem--I was very impressed!)

My Mom. Her food smells good. She is beautiful. I wish she had lots of dresses.

My Granny-she is extraordinary because she takes care of me. I feel happy about her. (Not much would top being called extraordinary by your grandchild! :)

The World-it helps you survive. It gives us healthy stuff. I feel amazed.

My bike is blue and orange. My bike makes a screechy sound. It makes me happy.

The star is shiny because the light up in the sky. You can see lot of stars there are a lot you can see.

I love my chicken. I try to catch my chicken but it ran away because it doesn't like me. But she goes home to lay eggs. (A little stream-of-consciousness-but we do say poems have no rules! :)

The Rainforest. A lot of animals. Cool birds. Flowery plants. Scary scorpions. Silly monkeys. It makes me happy.

Rainforest Ethics

I think Ethics is my favorite of all the icons. And I think the kids are really starting to understand it. We were reading Charlotte's Web and when she saves the pig in the beginning of the story (Just FYI-I edit a little bit during our read-aloud to say they were giving him away-I leave out the part about the ax). The father says Fern was trying to "rid the world of injustice" by saving Wilbur. I had to explain to the kids what injustice was, and right away one of the students said "that sounds like ethics". Yep, ethics comes into play a lot when you start talking about courts and justice. I am excited that they are beginning to apply the concept more readily now.

But I digress. We have been doing a unit on rainforests and I think the easy answer is to say cutting down the rainforests is wrong-- most people don't have to be tree-huggers to take that side. So I assigned 1/2 my class to write about how it's right, as a bigger challenge. I love some of the answers they came up with.

....because there is no boss in the rainforest.

It's ok for dangerous animals to be dead forever.

A future lawyer here :) she sees both sides of the argument.

Because we don't live there.

Wrong because people like to go to the rainforest.

Wrong because plants and animals live there.