Chapter Read Alouds for Kindergarten

Years ago I had an administrator who was making suggestions during a pre-service session. She said she thought every teacher should be doing read-alouds with their students above their grade level. It is great for vocabulary, comprehension and there are so many reading response activities you can do about characters changing over time, etc. It was like a lightbulb went off over my head. And from that day on I have ongoing chapter books that we read aloud together. It has become my favorite part of the day.

My suggestions for read alouds in early childhood:

This is an amazing mentor text to teach voice. Bernice has a rough life and a tough time fitting in. Lots of scenarios to discuss ethics and perspective. And it's funny!

Some students have seen the movie, but I feel like the book is different. It focuses more on the family and their poverty in the beginning and I think it makes the luck Charlie has even more amazing.

This is a tremendously deep book. It's about whether or not it's worth it to love-because you can get hurt. Edward goes through a tremendous change throughout the book and it's hard for me to get through the last page without tears. Lots of opportunities for activities to compare perspectives. I usually follow up with the Veleveteen Rabbit and we compare those two titles.

There are a few parts I skip that talk about things that happened in the war but otherwise I think this is a great story of an ESL student making his way in America. The main character is a refugee who is thrilled to have his own desk at school and accidentally puts the dishes in the washing machine. An opportunity for discussions about adapting to new situations and helping people who may not understand.

I truly believe every teacher should read this book. The protagonist is an odd bird and his teachers don't always understand him. Discussions about how differences make us stronger are my favorite part of sharing this story with kids.

Dad is late coming home with milk from the store and he weaves a revolutionary tale of why that is. Storytelling at its finest.

Melody is in a wheelchair and cannot speak but she is just like other kids. In places this book is poetic and what happens to Melody at the end still angers me. Great discussions about how to treat people with disabilities.

The donkey's mother died and they don't expect the baby to live very long. A great book to display empathy and how to care for animals. There is a parallel story about the boy's brother who is abroad as a soldier.

I was one of those people who believed my stuffed animals had feelings. This book details what the dolls do when the humans are not looking. 

Tua sees an elephant being mistreated so she takes it. Again, empathy for animals and discussions on ethics and fighting for social justice.

My new favorite to read aloud. Funny and genuinely fun to read. Wedgie is a very energetic Corgi and Gizmo is a guinea pig with plans to rule the world. Great example of voice in writing. (I've never seen a dog's voice captured better!)

A little long for the little ones, but it's exciting so it will keep their attention. The robot has to adapt to survive in the wilderness. Discussions about how a character can change and also things like "would you like to have a robot for a mother?"

I change up the books I read from year to year and I LOVE finding new ones to share with my students.

Activities Using Depth and Complexity for Teacher Appreciation Week

There are some activities that I do year after year. For Teacher Appreciation Week, I usually do teacher themed read-alouds and reading response activities. There are some that we can still do even in our virtual environment.

My favorite books about Teachers:

The little boy thinks his teacher is strict until he runs into her outside the classroom and gets to know her as a human being.

This story makes me cry because we have all had students like this one who feels misunderstood based on their behavior.

So 20 years ago I was sitting in class on my way to getting certified to teach. The professor read this book to us. It is still one of my favorite stories to read to students. Some of my students and I have been communicating with each other through letters. I wish I could give each one of them a copy of this book!

In the beginning this is a great discussion starter about what makes a good teacher. Willow is one of those students that her teacher just doesn't understand. She doesn't do things the desired way-she thinks outside the box.

When asked who my favorite teacher from literature is I think I have to say Miss Honey. She recognized the strengths and giftedness in Matilda and also the way she advocated for her.

Some activities using Depth and Complexity to go along with this unit:

Language of the Disciplines-Think like an architect. We review terms like "blueprint" and "arches". The students then design a house with a teacher in mind.

Multiple Perspectives: If I were a teacher, I would.....(see, feel, wish, do what?) These answers always intrigue me because they say things like I would never make students clean up or make recess be all day. It opens up a discussion on what makes a good teacher.

Trends: teachers past, present and future. What was teaching in a one-room school house like? Back then teachers could hit kids, was that right?

Ethics: I read Miss Nelson is Missing and we discuss if it was right or wrong for a teacher to trick her kids?

Student Feedback

Asking for feedback is incredibly important when you examine your practice as a teacher. Now this is more difficult in early childhood because the students cannot always articulate their feelings. They want to please you and will say what you think you want to hear. In the classroom, I do a survey where they can sound out their words or draw pictures to answer my questions. Virtually, it's a little more difficult. 

I made it an assignment on Google Classroom. It was created as a quiz with short answer responses. I asked:

1) What does your teacher always say? -the answer to this tells me a lot. If the answer is "sweetie" or "you can do it"-I am inspiring them. If the answer is "don't do that" or "clean up"-that's not what I want them to remember me for. I may need to work on developing classroom climate better.

2) What do your teacher like?  Again, I can tell from this answer the environment I am creating for my students. One year students wrote the name of a classmate-my teacher likes Emily and does not like Andrew. I was horrified. Of course, I like all my students, I needed to be more conscious of letting the class know that.

3) What is something your teacher does not like? -if the answer is "a mess" or "loud voices"-then I feel like we are emphasizing the wrong things in our classroom management techniques.

4) What was your favorite activity in class? (No recess or lunch as answers).

5) My teacher.....-completely open-ended.

I hope I get some kiddos to actually log in and respond. Even in all the chaos in our world today I feel like it is really important to reflect on how the year went and change what needs to be changed for future classes.

Virtual Teacher Appreciation

Like everything else, Teacher Appreciation Week will look different this year. A few suggestions if you are looking for something to share remotely with your child's teacher:

Crafts:

The students can make the teacher's likeness (we were actually going to do this for our support staff if we were still in school this week). Just cutout a body and decorate with scraps or magazine clippings that you have around the house. You could take a picture and share until you see them again.

Have your child dictate or write a Top 10 list. What are your Top 10 favorite things about that teacher.

Lastly, consider writing a heartfelt note or e-mail to your child's teacher. Consider copying their administrators. I think 99% of the time when a parent contacts admin, it is because there is a problem or complaint. It would be great for them to hear good things about a teaching who did something right in your eyes this year.

This remote learning process has been very hard on teachers. It's hard to be away from our students and our classrooms. It has been hard to find ways to engage students using devices and it has been hard to be isolated from our co-workers. We still collaborate, but it's different now. I think hearing a few kind words from you or from your child would go a long way. :) 

Donorschoose is doubling donations to teacher projects next week. Teachers are allowed to post projects now where they can have resources for students sent directly to their homes. They are called Distance Learning Projects. Maybe consider a donation to a teacher's project.

Ways to Incorporate Vocabulary

We all know vocabulary is important. It is especially important for me to explicitly incorporate these activities because many of them English Language Learners.

One of the ways I focus on vocabulary is using Language of the Disciplines from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity. We learn about the way different people in different careers look at the world. For example, an artist looking at the moon will see shadow, texture, hues. A scientist looking at the moon sees atmosphere, craters, gravity. For teacher appreciation week or Mother's Day the students learn about words that architects use-blueprint, area, arch, etc. Then they design a house for their teacher or their mom.

One of my favorite parent presentations is to do a Vocabulary Runway Show. The students are assigned a word and they come dressed as that word. They stand up and say the definition and an example. The best part is that the student is not just learning their word, but all the words in the class.

Powerful Words-we discuss what makes words powerful. We watch speeches like MLK's I Have A Dream speech or clips from graduation speeches. The students then make a mobile of what they consider to be powerful words. They use words like love, wonder, homeless. One of my students asked me if he could use the word hate-that is a pretty powerful word.

Vocabulary Block Party-each child is assigned a word and we go over the meaning together. We have a class "block party" where the students mingle, introducing themselves to their classmates as their word. "Hi, I'm wealthy, I mean very rich." "Really, I'm poverty which is when people are poor". 

We have vocabulary journals-some of their pages are Frayer Models. I love using this graphic organizer because not only are they thinking of examples-they are thinking of non-examples as well. If you can define what a word is not, then you understand that word.

You Be You

One of my favorite themes for read-alouds is characters who remained who they were even if people didn't like it. Here are some books that go along with that theme:

This book redefines what "beautiful" means.

A gorgeous story about being yourself in a world that doesn't always support it.

A girl growing up not liking her curly hair. She learns everyone has something that makes them unique.

One of my all-time favorite characters. She is small, has buckteeth and a horrible singing voice-but she sings loud and proud and stays true to herself.

Everyone (including her teacher) thinks Oddrey is just too odd. But her oddness saves the day.

I LOVE this book! His parents thought he was weird and worried about how different he was from the rest of the flock-but Woolbur is not going change who he is for anyone.

A classic! Tacky is an odd bird but a good bird to have around.

The Difficult Kids

I posted this meme on Facebook:

We have all had "difficult" students in our classes. I actually feel like we are actually seeing more extreme behaviors year after year. In my humble opinion, the combination of growing up in a digital world where everyone seems more disconnected added to what seems like less recognition by adults on the importance of consciously teaching kids how to deal with their feelings-- I believe has made it difficult for many students to assimilate to school situations.

This past school year I saw the most aggressive and destructive behaviors that I have ever seen. Resources thrown across the room, torn up books, furniture destroyed. Tables were flipped over and chairs thrown-I had to put my classroom back together on a daily basis. This student would run out of the classroom into the parking lot, actually tried to climb over the fence to escape the campus at recess. I was bitten, slapped, punched, kicked. I went home with bruises, a split lip, a black eye, swollen knees and drove home many days completely stressed and upset because I felt completely inadequate. Always walking on eggshells trying not to do something that would set him off.

I wanted to share what I learned from this experience because as I said, I think many educators will face the same challenges in upcoming years.

1) You cannot let the stress and pain that the student is causing you show. Yes, you are frustrated, yes you are sometimes angry (I spent my own money on those resources that are being destroyed). But the other students will take their cues from you and you have to show that you still love that student just like all the others. I would say something like "I love you all" and a kid would ask even that student. Yes, of course! We had conversations after he was removed from the classroom about how everyone doesn't act the same way-this is what you can do that would be helpful, yelling at him and calling him bad is not helpful. I set the tone and these students tried to do whatever they could to help. We had a code word and if I said it there were 2 assigned students who would go next door and get help. If I had to run after him, I wanted someone to still be watching the students. If I had to evacuate the classroom, a student was the "manager" in the hallway making sure everyone was sitting down quietly while I tried to calm my student down in the classroom. They were part of the solution.

I worked with a teacher once who had a student that in hindsight was probably autistic. She couldn't stand the behaviors he exhibited and said when students would say "I hate you" to him she encouraged it because she wished she could say those words. I was appalled. That student was sent to my class one day when he was acting up for a sub and I had a talk with my students beforehand. Look, he's going to part of our class today and we are going to treat him like a member of our class. They were doing a group project and he gave an answer to the problem. One of my students said "you are really smart". I could see it on his face, he was so happy to finally be accepted. You set the tone.

2) Ask for help when you need it. This was incredibly difficult for me. I have been teaching for 18 years. We got a new principal last year and I didn't want his impression of me to be a high-maintenance teacher who couldn't handle her class. I had colleagues making comments about they would never let a student act like that in their class. It got to the point where I was literally losing hours of instruction every day. I needed help. 

3) You can get through this. I see posts from teachers all the time quitting because of situations like this and I understand it. I really do. It's almost like being in an abusive relationship. You think to yourself-I don't deserve this. I show up every day and I just want to teach. But this too shall pass. Hang in there.

4) Be open to new ideas. I tried everything anyone suggested to me. At one point our diagnosticians said to just let him do what he wanted to do. He liked to play with legos and draw. I was against this at first. I thought if we just let him do what he wants and not requiring him to do the work the other kids were doing it wasn't fair. But you know what, as soon as we started doing that I could actually teach again. Everyone was more calm. We had these major outbursts 2-3 times per week instead of 2-3 times a day. I'm glad I had been convinced to try that.

5) Don't give up on them. Every behavior stems from a need. Our job is to figure out what that need is and try to fill it. 

I will say I sent a letter to my district leaders asking them to consider offering more training for these situations and to make the process easier. This student was with me for 6 months before testing was complete for a referral. There really should be an emergency process in place.