Sometimes They Just Make Me Smile

I looped up with my students this year. About 2/3's of my class was with me for Kinder. I knew there were pros and cons of that scenario going into it. One of the cons is, I think they have gotten too comfortable. I will dismiss them to their seats and there will still be 7 of them there talking to me--um, hello???? But they know by now I'm no Viola Swamp. And sometimes I will fall for it, especially if they can get me talking about my Ruby.

One of the benefits is, we certainly know each other very well. I've mentioned before that my favorite part of the day is our chapter read-aloud. The time varies because we can never keep to a schedule. Sometimes we have time before lunch, sometimes it's right after-but the routine is always the same, come in and make a circle on the carpet. Today we came back from lunch and the kids went in, another teacher stopped me in the hall to ask a question. A minute later I walk in my room to find this in a space left between 2 students  (presumably my seat) who were part of a perfect circle comprising of the rest of the class:

Now I know that doesn't mean much to you. That's the read-aloud book, a reading response journal (which I usually reference before we read so they know what I'm going to expect them to write about after the chapter) and my iced tea. :) It was just so cute. They just had everything all prepared for the next step in our day--- ready to go teach. You gotta love 'em!!!!!

Valentine's Day and Ethics

Ethics was a new concept to my kids this year. I actually get a lot of flack for incorporating the concept into our activities-1st Graders can't handle that! Well, I beg to differ. I think it's very important in helping them see things from another angle. My favorite part of the movie Dead Poet's Society is when Robin Williams stands on the desk and asks his students to see the world differently, shake things up a bit.

My kids weren't used to that. I would play devil's advocate with their answers, but what if....And they would act like they said something wrong. Of course, I reassured them I was just trying to get them to view the idea from a different angle and I think they really do get it now. Often kids will tell you an answer, but not be able to justify the why. We've experimented many times this year with investigating the duality of situations-right and wrong, good and bad.

I asked them to do that with Valentine's Day. Was there any downside to the holiday? Are some kids left out when it comes to passing out Valentines? They talked a lot about celebrating with family-what if you didn't have a family? Then I asked them to write about the holiday-one good thing and one maybe not-so-good thing about it. Some of them came up with some extraordinary ideas that I actually hadn't even thought of. Don't you love it when your kids surprise you with how well they can apply something?

"The bad thing about Valentine's-grown-ups have to spend money. Grown-ups don't have money."

The good thing about Valentine's if you could pass chocolate and you could buy a sweater.

Valentine's Day with Rigor

It's not all work and no play in my class, but I do like activities to be rigorous, even those linked to the holidays. Just a few examples of how we challenge them a bit for Valentine's Day:

1) Valentine's Sudoku-very easy to make with clip art. I erase one of each shape to start with and put them on the line on the bottom. The kids cut out those pieces and place them strategically with only one in each row vertically and horizontally. Great for critical thinking. I always make a few for a bigger challenge with more missing, just make sure you move them to the bottom row so they can add that to what they need to cut out.

2) Use the heart shape in a different way. The kids used cutouts so they could manipulate the shape, turning it in different ways. They made a list of 5 things they could make with that shape and then chose one to illustrate. I love seeing all the different ideas they come up with-they know my expectation is that no two papers be the same-they need to try to come up with something that no one else thought of.

an elephant

the pendulum of an old clock

a parachute

a harp

3) Invent a new candy and write about the steps of its production.

4) Create a new symbol for Valentine's besides the heart.

5) Compare Valentine's Day to other holidays.

6) Write a coded Valentine to trade with a friend. See if they can break the code.

Just some ideas to put a little rigor into holiday activities.



Making Morning Message More Meaningful

(ok, so I really mean more rigorous, but who can pass up a chance at alliteration).

Morning Message is a staple of elementary classrooms. We are required to it every day at our school as a literacy activity. Unfortunately, I don't think many teachers get everything out of the activity that they could. Many simply write a message and then have the children copy it, or come up and circle certain words. My kids get bored with that very quickly. I had to come up with something that allowed them to get those creative juices flowing. I think it works because even now in February they are still reminding me to do it every day!

1) Remember Mad-Libs? I will write the sentences and leave spaces for verbs, adverbs or adjectives and ask the kids for suggestions. We randomly fill them in. Of course our message ends up talking about our "stinky" math or our "graceful" teacher (definitely completely made-up). But what I love is hearing the kids laugh before they even get to the end of the sentence as we're reading it. They are reading in phrases and looking ahead like they are supposed to do. Of course, I do have to explain when someone from administration reads it, but it's all educational.

2) Analogies. I always add 2 or 3 analogies after the main message. Sometimes I leave out 2 parts of the comparison: Washington: quarter as _____:_______. Sometimes I give them the words and ask them for the relating factor: Cherry:ice cream sundae    roof: house, then they tell me the relationship and then come up with others.

3) A little Venn diagram. I have the students give me 2 nouns and we compare them. The more random the better. We just come up with about 2 facts for both differences and 2 for the similarities (often the hard part). It's amazing how if you think about it you can come up with similarities for almost any objects.

4) A little graph. Now I know graphs are not literacy-related, unless... you are asking about a story. We always have an on-going chapter book, so I'll often ask about that. They simply write their names in their choice as they enter in the morning. Maybe just a simple t-chart-do you think Chester Cricket will ever go home? Or a bar graph-who is your favorite character? The important part after we discuss most/least, etc. is I ask a few to defend their position. Why did you choose that one? Sometimes they just choose because their friend did, that's not good enough for me-you have to have an argument to back up your choices.

We don't do all these every day, but change them intermittently for variety. I truly believe in challenging them from the beginning of class to the end. This includes the Morning Message for us.

(I call them Ninjas and Ballerinas because that's how I used to have to dismiss them in Kinder. I would tell the boys to go to their seats like Ninjas and the girls like Ballerinas, sometimes vice versa just for fun. It stuck as our opening).

Over Time

I added several new icons this year with my kids. One of them was "Over Time". I really thought it would be easy for them to grasp (they got ethics right away). Nope. It took them awhile to really understand. At first we did an ice cube over time-starts off as water, freezes then melts. We had many Social Studies objectives to compare past and present; so we looked at cars, planes, cities, etc.

We've been talking about Civil Rights a lot and I decided to have them write about how Civil Rights have changed over time. I think they may finally be getting it. My favorite is the one that says in the future she'll be the President! With that student it just may happen.

GT and Academic Achievement

I think many people have a skewed view of GT students. GT does not equal high academic achievement. As a matter of fact there is a lot of literature out there on the lack of motivation (I won't say laziness) in GT students. The fact is, they are clever enough to figure out quickly how to do the minimum in order to get by. I have also had several students through the years with learning disabilities or who were ESL-their classwork does not show what they have the potential to do. Our district has now made a goal for all GT students to achieve commended status on their standardized testing. I think it's a really unfair standard. Yes, they possess an innate ability to pick things up quickly, but in this age of teaching to the test and ignoring the kids who can already pass, teachers don't often spend as much time with the advanced kids. They often don't show a much growth. And it is hard if a 3rd Grade student is already reading at a 5th Grade level to give them the skills they need to move up to a 6th or 7th Grade level-but it can be done. Instead our focus is on the struggling students and our poor GT kids just kind of stagnate.

Anyway, just to prove a point. I have a very bright class-they are creative, well-behaved (for the most part :) and most of them are eager to learn. For the 100th day I challenged them with working in pairs to be the first group to come up with exactly 100 counters-I wanted to see if they could apply what we've learned about grouping. They all used different manipulatives and we had a little competition. Now bear in mind, we have spent a good amount of math instruction this year on place value. They've been counting by 10's, 5's and 2's since Kinder. Only one group figured out it was faster to group them and count rather than counting by 1's and losing your count again and again. Of course, I explained it to them and if we played again, I bet many more students would apply that and count by 10's-but it's not automatic. They still have to be taught!

Even in Kinder-they begin the year, most them not being able to read. Even if they can read, you still have to teach them phonics rules and end up teaching them backwards, because they can already read the word but have no idea why. I had a parent once brag that their Kinder child could multiply-sure he could rattle off the facts, but had no idea what that process meant or when to use it, how to apply it. You should see how much patience it takes to teach them how to compare and contrast. "How are these 2 things different?", "they're just different.", "ok, but in what ways?", "they are different things." Ugh. Once they get it they can apply it readily, but getting there is like pulling teeth.

Anyway, my point is GT/advanced kids still need to be taught. They still need to meet with you in reading groups. If they finish the work in 2 seconds, they should have a more challenging activity-- not sit there reading a book or even worse yet, my pet peeve-"Johnny, why don't you go around and help the students who aren't finished yet". It's really ok to give different students different work! My class has 2 different sets of spelling words. I give out 3 different comprehension passages for their tests. If you're testing comprehension it should be at their reading level-if they can't read it, they definitely can't comprehend it.

All kids deserve to grow academically!

Snowy Day Writing

Working in Texas, Snowy Days are a foreign concept for my kiddos. We have had light dustings; but nothing compared to what kids who live up North have experiences with. They don't know what a toboggan is or how to make a snow fort, or the fact that you have to get so bundled up in a snowsuit you end up walking like a penguin.


We read Ezra Jack Keats The Snowy Day and used a Double Bubble map to compare a snowy day to a sunny day (we certainly have our fair share of those). Then the students drew themselves ready for snow and wrote about what they would do.

Now I've had these kiddos since Kinder. When I first got them I was lucky if they could write their names. They certainly weren't writing sentences, even the advanced kids. It makes me so proud to see how far they have come. Their stories have titles, spelling is really coming along. I truly believe in "Kid Writing" not having them copy off the board or editing it and giving it back to them to copy over-but their real writing, real ideas. You can learn a lot by looking at their writing and I think you can guide them into becoming very creative writers that way.