What to do, what to do……..

I’ve got a little girl in my class of 30 who is becoming more and more disruptive.  I’m a little puzzled because I don’t know if she is just being defiant, and willfully disobedient or if she has something going on that she can’t help.  The problem is that what she does is so disruptive, but it’s not usually an out and out blow up.  She doesn’t seem able to pay attention, she is restless and moves around the room a lot.  When told to be quiet or sit down, it doesn’t happen.  When it becomes confrontational, she laughs.  I think that the laughter on her part is defensive though.  It’s putting on a front, as she backs herself into a corner……

Friday, she visited the principal and had to talk to dad on the phone.  That sobered her up… for about a half hour.  So I talked to Mom when Mom picked her up.

Today when she was being disruptive by talking and moving around and playing in the sink, and going back and forth between the sink, the drinking fountain, and the bathroom, I finally put her in timeout.  She promptly tipped her chair over and fell down.  So I took the chair away and had her sit on a tile on the floor.  So then she started rolling around and crawling on the floor.  At P.E. she was swearing, knocked or pulled another child off of the bars and hurt the child, so the P.E. teacher put her in timeout.

I need to talk to the guidance counsellor about her.   If we can’t get things figured out for her, it’s going to be a long year, for her and me.

The new year, the new school…..

I don’t get it.  It seems like I’m spending FOREVER at my school.  I was there for most of the three weeks before my track started.  I’ve been putting in 10 to 12 hour days since school started for me.  I’ve been there every weekend, with no air conditioning……  It just seems like there is still so MUCH to do.  This weekend I needed to rearrange the room  to make room for a small group instruction area for differentiated instruction.  I needed to get at least one pocket chart up.  I needed a pocket chart to put my daily schedule up for the administration.  Whatever floats their boat I guess.  I mean, who is it for……?  I have my plans to follow,  if I post it, the kids can’t read…… and administration have my daily schedule, and access to my plans…..

One of the frustrating things about my otherwise very nice room is that there isn’t much wall space. I could use a couple more pocket charts, but I’m having trouble finding places for them.

Sometimes I think schools make kindergarten teachers do some things, just because EVERYBODY else has to.  I really HATE going to meetings that I’ve been told to come to, about things that kindergarten doesn’t do,  or if we have to do it, we have to do it different than everyone else.

At my new school, they don’t let kids play on the playground before school.  I think one of the reasons is that they don’t have enough people to cover the whole playground the way it’s layed out.  Kindergarten has it’s own playground, but the same rule applies.  It just makes no sense to have kindergarten kids stand in line for 20 minutes in the morning.  If the goal is to not have the kids show up so early, then just lock the gates until it’s time to line up.  We want them there so they aren’t late for school, but they can’t DO anything when they get there.

I think one of my problems is getting used to having more kids.  For the last three years, I had around 25 kids, this year I’m right at 30, and more kids takes more time.  And energy.  They are great kids, but I can see that it’s going to be hard to get this many as far as I got my previous classes.  It’s like I have to find time in my schedule someplace for one more group.  And what that REALLY means is that I can’t get to every group every day.  So everyone gets less small group time.

A Sub Per Week…… so far.

Last week we had a sub on Thursday so that I could Dibel the kids.  Yesterday, I’m in my room before school, and in walks a sub.  “Hi, I’m your sub.”

I said, “Sorry, I don’t have a sub.”

“I was assigned, I have your name, the office gave me your keys….”

Hummmm.  “I’ll be right back.”

I went down to the office, “Sure, You have a sub, you must have called in for her.  You have a meeting today.”

“What meeting?”

“School Improvement Plan meeting, you ARE grade level co-chair, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know about a meeting and I didn’t call for a sub.”

“Well you do, and you have.”

“Great, I haven’t prepared for a sub.”

Principal, “Your plans need to be good enough for a sub.”

“They ARE, but it is NICE for a sub, to write out a few things, like class routines, WHERE the teacher guides are in the room, WHERE the specials are in the building, the FIRE DRILL we are supposed to have a retake on because we failed the last one…….”

It was a GREAT day.

See, they forget that for the first THREE weeks of school, track one wasn’t HERE.

“You mean I forgot to tell you about the meeting?”

Thursday, when I had the substitute….

Every teacher just loves a good sub.  It was SO good to be there Thursday testing the kids and watching my sub work.  Did she do everything she was supposed to?  No.  But I don’t care,  because everything she DID do with the kids was relevant to the first week of school and she knew how to relate to 5 year olds.  She did the key parts, but brought in a LOT of other things, she sang with them, she explained things in Spanish sometimes, (about 80 % of my class is Hispanic),  she found one of my puppets and engaged the kids with it.  They had a wonderful day, and she seemed to enjoy working with them.

The great thing was that I got to see all of that, because I was in and out of the room all day testing the kids with DIBELS.  Believe me when I say that I have had subs that were at the other end of the spectrum.

We finished our first week of school!

The kids did so good this week, that I told them that as a reward, they could take the next two days off with no school!  They were SO excited!  You should have seen my aide’s face when she heard me tell them that…….

Aide – I will get her SOME of the time this year to help, but I was really blessed to have her basically for all day of each day this first week of school and it really made a huge difference (especially during the fire drill).  Oh boy, do WE need to work on THAT procedure……..  Basically we have two full time aides to help out in 5 kindergarten classrooms,  one class is always on break, so there are always 4 classes in session to share the two aides.

Dibels, using the Palm

I do like using the palm for recording and scoring Dibels.  I’ve done it for three years manually.  The Palm is much easier.  I did the Initial Sound Fluency and the Letter Naming Fluency with 25 students in one day.  I have three more students to do tomorrow and I will be finished.  They are newer students and have to be uploaded to the Palm still.  I was reasonably impressed with how well most of them did.  But until I upload the data, I don’t know for sure where we stand.  I’m pretty sure that they did better overall than my class did last year at the beginning of the year.  When I sync the Palm tomorrow it will download the new students to the Palm and upload the finished assessments at the same time.

Cool.

Today was day three.

I read this this evening and it really was kind of a drag.  How does THAT happen?

Do what I say…

from Kindergarten Chaos by splatypus

We are on our 35th day of Kindergarten

I’m on day three…….

The kiddo’s are getting lots of compliments on how well they behave for it being day three.  They are doing great in the lunch room and in all of their specials (art, music, p.e., library).  They are doing well with the routines and procedures in the classroom also.  There’s still a few of them trying the limits. Which they will no doubt still be doing on day 179….

Tomorrow, I have a sub for the day so that I can dibel.  I’m tired just thinking about it.  It will be good to get an idea of who knows what though.  Just wish it wasn’t on day 4.

Day Two of the Year

Yesterday was the first day of my class’s school year.  Twenty-six out of twenty-eight kids were there.  They were pretty good other than not knowing anything.  By that, I mean not knowing anything much about school, how to act or what to do.  It was hilarious (if it wasn’t so painful) to watch them walk down the hall for example.  Absolutely no concept of walking in line.  Throughout the day they kept asking when they got to play, finally I told them that they weren’t going to get to play until they could walk in the hall in a straight line.  Now I’ve got to find something for them to play because they were pretty good today walking in the hall.

Yesterday they were pretty subdued,  today they were testing the limits.  Probably half the kids spent a couple of minutes in timeout at one point or another, nothing bad or very long, just so they know what’s  appropriate and not.  But they are cute.  They just want to find out what they can do or not do.  I’ve got one little lost soul though that I’m worried about.  I can explain what we are going to do at their tables and then send them to the tables to do it.  The one little guy just sits there.  I said, “Hey, Steven (not his real name) where did everybody go?”  He looks at me like, “Huh?”  then he says, “They went away.”  I said, “What do you think you should do?”  He looks at me kind of puzzled and hazards a, “Go away?”

Then there’ are bathroom issues.  With the bathrooms in the classroom, I had to train the boys to close the door when they use it.  And wash their hands.

We sometimes use the larger bathrooms down the hall, when we are going to specials or getting ready to go to lunch.  It’s easier to move more of them through faster.  Today, this second grade boy comes up to me and says, ” Mister, there’s some girls in the boy’s bathroom.”   I go in there and sure enough, there’s these little girl shoes hanging down in the stalls.  So I made all the boys stay out until the two girls were finished and then I  had to explain to them that they were in the wrong bathroom………as they walked out past the urinals…….

Beginning of the year Kindergarten drawing.

I think in the 7 years that I have taught kindergarten I have never seen a picture quite this undeveloped.  It was a family picture, so she had four of these.  Mom looked like this, Dad looked like this, and the kids all looked like this.

The Room and tomorrow is the big day….

I have seating for 30 kids, I’m at 28 on my list.  If I put out a lot of positive energy, maybe some of them won’t show……..  I could only wish.  Title 1 gives the kids a free book each week, 32 total.  The first book going home is Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom  hence the bulletin board…….  The yellow bulletin board is called Mountain Language.