The Day Before Thanksgiving

We are in a part of the country where we don’t get a lot of weather, it plays heck with that part of the morning when we are doing calendaring and I ask, “hum……  what’s the weather like today?”  Because generally, it’s about the same.  Every.  Single.  Day.

Anyway today it rained, and we went on “rainy day schedule”.  I know, I know,  some of you are thinking, “Big WHOOP, it rained”  but for us it’s a big deal, because it means we can actually DO the weather today.  I had a colleague at school who moved here from one of those places that actually HAS weather, and she was driving down the street one day shortly after she moved here, when it was raining and noticed what she thought at the time, was the oddest thing.  People were sitting in their garages with the doors up, just watching the rain.  She said, “What the heck’s with that?  Are they nuts around here?  About a year later, when it rained again, she understood.

But back to “rainy day schedule”.  (for those of you who have rain a lot, generally it’s probably no big deal.  I know that at my son’s school where they regularly have snow in the winter, the kids have recess outside in the snow and the kids go outside and play in the snow, but here, it’s a big deal because the kids don’t come to school dressed for it, they either don’t know how, or they don’t have the wet weather clothes) The “Plan” needs some serious work.  I mean, why should I have to have three classes of kindergarten kids entering and dismissing out of my room, just because I have an outside door?  In the morning…..  ours is an indoor school, meaning that when it’s raining most students enter through the front door of the school,  but they want kindergarten to come in a different way, through the two (we have 5) kindergarten rooms that have outside doors.  Which would be fine IF half of them didn’t come in through the front doors with their siblings.   So the teachers who are deeper in the school can’t be in their rooms monitoring kids AND down at my room monitoring kids at the same time.  We have kinder kids showing up at both places.  And then one of the kindergarten teachers has to be in the lunch room for breakfast, to escort the kindergarten breakfast kids to the classrooms.  If she’s there, she can’t be at her room…..   It was a fun day.

And between the rain and the holiday, they were wound up tighter than the main spring on a 7 day clock.  But after going crazy all day I finally found something that works.  I told them that I was looking for the quietest kid to give a sticker to.

I’m continually amazed at what they will do for a sticker.  I had peace and quiet the last half hour of school.  In the end, I gave them all stickers, but it was SO quiet, even the girl who can’t sit still to save her life, could for a sticker…….

A Fantastic Breakthrough to Watch

This one little girl did the most amazing thing this week.  She got phonemic awareness.  I mean, she got it.  I spent a half hour with her just a few weeks ago, and at the end of the half hour, she couldn’t tell me what sounds sun or moon started with.  She had a sort sheet and 12 pictures that either started with /s/ or /m/.  At the top of the page were Mm and a picture of a moon,  and Ss with a corresponding picture of a sun.  After a half hour, she still couldn’t isolate the m or s sounds on the sun and moon, let alone any of the 12 pictures she needed to sort.  Early this week she took a theme (unit) test in reading on our recent unit, and got one of the highest scores in class.  Lots of kids did, but she has been scoring so low on anything, that I was thinging it was a fluke.  But Thursday, she brought a sort sheet up that was for  the sounds for D and N.  She had some questions about the names for some of the pictures.  When I told her the name of the first picture, she correctly sorted the word to the correct letter.  I went through the whole group of pictures and the only ones she had trouble with were the two pictures that were R controlled D’s.  I have never actually SEEN a kid go from having NO phonemic awareness to having it, in such a short time.  It was SO cool…..

There are a lot of intangable rewards for teaching, but not always this dramatic.

What a Week

Four days of Reading First, and one day of Administrator observation.  I’m tired of it.  If I was paranoid, I’d think they didn’t think I was doing a good job.  Well, with the Reading First people, that might actually be the case, but the administrator has to evaluate once this year anyway and that evaluation has to be based on a minimum of three observations.  Reading First I’m not worried about, I’m making the changes that they want, and with them, I think it’s mostly procedural.  Anyway, if for some reason they really turn on me, it’s not like I don’t have options, I have two hundred sick days accumulated for one thing……………….

More Reading First

So, two days of being observed, and by being observed I mean as many as 6 extra adults in my room at the same time during the observing, and one day of “co-operative” teaching where their person comes in and co-teaches with me, modeling how they think things should be done and then, “helping” me teach my part of the co-teaching.  I’m just glad it’s over.  …………  I HOPE it’s over.  At least for the time being anyway.  I know it’s a full moon and all, but my kids are going nuts now.  Too many disruptions, and routine changes.

And while I have listened, nodded my head and smiled, on a number of levels I am also frustrated.  Over all though it has generally been valuable.  After some discussion, we have made some simple changes in classroom layout that will make things more affective, and we introduced some changes in some of the routines which frankly I welcome if they will change some of my kids disruptive behaviors.  They want me to use more effective ways to involve more of the children in the actual process.  Some of these are co-operative learning strategies.  The easiest one to implement with kinder kids is probably the “think, pair, share” model.  To work in kindergarten it needs structure.  We started out by assigning the partners at their tables before they moved to the carpet.  We assigned them partner names, in this case, partner A and Partner B.  That way we could get specific in telling them what to do.  “A, tell B what you are going to do after school.”  “B, raise your hands,”  etc, etc.   Another specific thing she modeled for me, something that I had gotten sloppy on, was using specific hand signals to illicit behaviors.  Such as one for think time, one for group response, etc.  If I can retrain the kids to move away from blurting out the answers and cheating the others of a chance to respond that would be great.  So all in all, I learned some things and will be making some changes to tighten things up a bit.

Was everything good?  Not in my book. Yesterday she made reference or alluded to the “fact”  that the 5 day cycle in Trophies was cyclical in that the same things or types of things or instruction tended to happen on the same days of the 5 day cycle in each weekly unit.  I hadn’t really picked up on that during the last three years of teaching Trophies.  I had heard it alluded to, but hadn’t really “seen” it.  I had dismissed my not seeing it as being due to the fact that we were on a 6 day teaching rotation at my last school to accommodate the art, music, science, library and PE specialists schedules, and also due to holidays and staff training days, we rarely actually taught day one on Monday and day five on Friday on any kind of consistent basis.  But since she brought it up, I took some time last night and looked at the schedule over multiple weeks.  I still don’t see it.  It might be the case in the upper grades, but I can’t find it in the kindergarten sequence.

Some of the other things they did, or showed me, or want me to do  are iffy.  For example, I went out and spent $35.00 on dry erase markers (the ones available at school were the high odor ones) so that she could have the kids use small white boards at their tables.   I hate using paint or markers in class, they are messy and the kids get into trouble with them.  It’s also a management issue.  Money is tight right now, and getting tighter in my school and district with millions being cut from the district budgets by the state. They can write with pencil or crayon on paper just fine.  Or better yet, I have these special tablets I purchased at the National Kindergarten Conference two years ago that are made up of iron powder between two layers of plastic that kids can write on with magnetic stylists.  She didn’t want to use them.

“Worksheet” is a bad word on general principle with them.  Regardless of how appropriate the selected worksheet might be, (in fact, presented as center activities, my worksheets are OK) but if I use the same worsheet whole group, it’s bad.  They appear to want the kids rotating through a variety of small group centers rather than doing the same work in a larger group.  If most of it’s the same work, why should it make a difference?  It’s not like the whole group work is all that my students do, they leave the seat work to do computers, small group instruction, and some other small center activities, it just the primary activity that they start they daily work from.

The specialist appear to want fidelity to the Reading program, but they pick and chose the parts they want to fidelity to, but are reluctant to allow me (or the other teachers for that matter) to do the same.  To show letter formation, I use a Frog Street Press DVD, I sometimes use different music selections than the ones that come with the program.  For my Morning Message, shared writing activity, they even changed out my paper tablet for crying out loud.  I’m not buying the ones they provided, the giant post it note variety.  The first time they don’t have the replacement tablet, I’m back to my old ones that cost about two thirds less.

Reading First

When I came to my new school this fall, I was told that it was a “Reading First” school, going into year 4 or 5 of the grant, which ever year, we are in the final year.  No “Reading First” as such next year,  at least any part of it that involves spending money.  I was a little curious about “RF” knowing nothing about it, and asked some questions, the reading specialist initially got a little huffy and told me, “It’s BEST PRACTICES, if you don’t want to do it, why did you come here?”  Which wasn’t MY point in asking the questions in the first place, I had just come off of the best year of teaching kindergarten and reading that I had ever had, and was on a kind of high about that, I wanted to be able to replicate it.  I wasn’t sure how much “RF” was going to impact that.  Trophies and most other components of my reading program are the same at the new school.

Well, it hasn’t much.  I’ve only had one specialist into my room on two different occasions, for relatively short times and little to no feed back.  Anything they have suggested, I’ve tried to implement.  Today, we had State visits.  I  had just finished the Whole group instruction and was breaking up for seatwork, centers and small group instruction when the five of them came in.  They blew in, and less than 10 minutes later, they blew back out.  I gather they will be back around tomorrow, and one of them will meet with me on my prep to talk about my reading program, but other than that, I’m still pretty much in the dark.

I have a hard time turning 5 year olds loose in centers unsupervised,  Centers should be developmentally appropriate, they should be differentiated, and meaningful.  Not too hard, but not too easy, yet something that they can do on their own with a minimal amount of help.  Well that’s easier said than done.  My high group are beginning readers.  My bottom group know fewer that 10 letters and sounds a piece.  The groups in the middle, are, in the middle.  It’s difficult to make centers that meet all of those needs and criteria.  So many center activities are so time consuming to make, who’s got the time?  I’m already spending 10 to 15 hours a week outside of class on school work.  If I had a life, I couldn’t do that. Those super teachers, that everyone hears about, like “The Essential 55″ by Ron Clark, they don’t have a life outside of teaching, and when they get a life, their teaching changes.  You cannot do a 30 year career burning your energy at that level.

I tend to line them up with a number of pages of seat work, the seat work is work based on the worksheets they have in Trophies, only more of it.  The typical Trophies worksheet, for example the one today, had four places on the page, for them to write a letter Nn.  And another page with maybe 20 letters on it, some of which are Nn’s, and they circle the Nn’s. That’s not worth the paper it takes to run it off.  So I do essentially the same activities, but they have to write more and find more letters.  Same skills, but more practice.  So everybody starts out doing the same seat work, it’s grade level appropriate, and as they work on it, some are going to computers, and some are working with me in small group.  As they finish their basic seat work, they then have a few centers that they can rotate into.  But the centers aren’t the main work at this time, they are ancillary to the seat work which everybody does first.  I think that this approach might not be the way they want me to do it.  We’ll see.

Puppets

The Trophies reading program has a little rabbit puppet that you use for some of the phonics/phonemic awareness stuff.  At my old school, I had the whole Trophies kit, but the puppet was missing.  Since I needed a puppet, and since the school mascot was a lion, I got one of these and used it instead. When I moved to my new school, the mascot is different so I went back to The Trophies theme, but their little bunny was kind of lame, so I got this one. He’s a full size jackrabbit, and is very realistic.  The kids are really funny with a puppet. You don’t have to even worry about moving your mouth, the kids don’t care.  But usually I will have “Jack” (that’s his name) just whisper in my ear, like he’s shy, or doesn’t want to talk in front of the kids.  So I’m up there in front having this two sided conversation with the rabbit, and the kids are not their normal selves.  I mean, they are paying attention.  What’s with that…….

I bring the lion out once in awhile, but I tell them that he likes to sleep in the closet alot.  They wanted to know if he had any family…….  Kids.  So I said, “Sure, he has a brother that works at the San Diego Zoo, and he has two sisters and some cousins still in Africa.”  They all go, ” Awhh….”

Assessments

Last Wednesday, before I went to my trainings for two days, my aide did alphabet and number assessments on all my kids.  It took pretty much the whole day.  I’ve done DIBELS with them and that gives a pretty good indicator of where they are at.  But this tells me exactly what they know.  Well, barring the the inconsistencies of testing 5 year olds, but this is about as good as it gets.

I had a chance to look over the results the other day and they aren’t too bad.  Most of the kids actually know something…..  Most of the kids know at least half of their letter sounds and most of their letters.  The ones who don’t know much, for the most part aren’t a surprise although there were a couple of surprises.  Interesting how some kids come across as knowing more than they actually do.  Besides the letters and sounds, most of them know the six sight words that we have done in Trophies so far too.

One of the interesting things I thought was the aide’s perception that more of my kids knew more of the letters and sounds than the kids in the other classes.  I’m not in a competition, nor am I interested in out performing the other teachers, it’s just that I do wonder how, what I do, compares in it’s effectiveness with the rest of the world.  And I want to be doing a good job.  I want to know that what I do or think works actually does work.

Sure, we have an adopted reading program, but I think that I supplement it a lot.  I think I pick better worksheets for the seat work than the series does, and I think I sometimes push a little different focus or approach things a little different than the set packaged program.  A lot of my phonics comes from this program by Fountas and Pinnel and I think it works very well.

The Write Tools

I spent the last two days getting inserviced on this writing program.  We are using it as part of our Reading First Literacy program.  I think I like it better than Write From the Beginning which goes along with Thinking Maps.  For me, it seems more user friendly.  The hard part as always is in adapting it down to Kindergarten.  It looks like mostly at first just modeling the process whole group, so that when they CAN write they automatically use the strategies.  Pretty straight forward.

I was sitting there in the first day of the training (Thursday) though, and the presenter mentioned that on Friday she would be going into greater depth in this one area and I thought to myself, “Oh Oh.”  I had only ordered a sub for one day.  I have signed up this fall for so many different trainings, (most cancelled due to low enrollment) that I had totally spaced that this one was a two day training.  I quickly called the school to see if the sub could be held over, but she already had another assignment, so the kids had two subs in two days.  Then Monday and Tuesday are no-school days, so Wednesday aught to be interesting after a 6 day separation.

The Monday After Halloween

After all the kindergarten kids had lined up and gone into their classrooms for the day, I found a still wrapped tootsie roll on the ground.

So when we were all sitting on the floor, I held it up, explaining to the kids where I had found it and asked if anyone wanted it.    Pretty much the whole class raised their hands and clamored for it.  So I explained AGAIN where I had gotten it from and asked again.  Pretty much the same hands went up.  So we had a long conversation (well I did anyway, can you have a conversation if nobody is listening?) about where the candy had come from…..  i.e. nobody really knew, and so it came from a STRANGER.  Were they supposed to take things from strangers?  (Careful here to NOT talk about the strangers that they got half of their trick or treat candy from in the first place, don’t need to confuse or cloud the issue)  No, they were not.  OK, who wants the candy?  Same hands.  I’m seriously getting frustrated here.

So I said, “Nobody gets the candy, it’s going into the trash, BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM….”

And to make sure it STAYED in the trash, I took it out of the wrapper and rubbed it on the bottom of my shoe.  They SOUNDED pretty disgusted about that, so maybe it stayed in the trash…..

A Little More Halloween

During lunch on Thursday, one of the younger female teachers in the lounge, said that she was talking to her class about a costume party that she had gone to that week and had dressed up as a Geisha.  After she was done talking one of her boys said to her, “So you went as a hooker…….”

The funny thing was that on one level he was kind of right, and she wasn’t even aware that there was some basis for his understanding of the situation….