If you have six cookies and there are three kids………

Apparently since school is out for the majority of the district (and that’s another whole pet peeve), someone has too much free time.  They have put a filter block on blogs.  I can’t get to my school blog from school anymore.  Oddly, I can still access blogs to read through Google Reader, I just can’t go directly to the blogs proper, and I can’t post.  I guess it’s no surprise, I was a little surprised I could l get to them in the first place.

Today we were doing math and I was trying to get the kids to figure out how to divide up a bunch of Unifix  Cubes into equal piles.  Getting them to problem solve is like pulling teeth.  Actually, I think I’d RATHER pull teeth.  After working at it on the rug for about 45 minutes, and still dealing with a lot of glazed over eyes, I put my head down on the floor and said, “I want my Momma, I think I’m going to cry.”  My new kid (the one driving me crazy) said, “Mr. B’s not going to cry, he’s a MAN.”   Then he nudged me (I had my face down in my hands), “Come on Mr. B. – MAN UP -  be a MAN.”

Where do they get this stuff?

Summer in a Year-Round School……..

I have always taught at the same OLD (over 40 years, and for here, that’s old) school.  I was there for 18 years and during that time the school facility went through two major rehabs.  Power outages, and heating and air-conditioning problems  just seemed part of being at an OLD school.  My new school is less than 6 years old.  What could go wrong?

Dumb question.  Apparently anything that can go wrong at an OLD school can happen at a newer one.  Yesterday, early afternoon, the power went out and was out intermittently for the rest of the day.  It turns out that one of the two compressors for the air-conditioning system for the building died.  Nobody chose to tell the parents, or the staff that.  So today we had “half” air.  The district doesn’t have the part.  No word to us on when they will get the part.  It was 99 degrees F. today.  It wasn’t too bad in my room, because yesterday I happened to overhear the Principal telling another teacher (apparently someone she cared about) that she “might” want to bring a fan for her room today………

I brought a fan, and an ice chest and Koolaid for the kids.  It went real well.  Except for the the one boy who drank too much Koolaid and apparently has a thing about using (or should I say NOT using) the toilets at school.  I now have a nice PEE circle on my carpet.  I say MY carpet because it IS my carpet, the one I bought for circle time, because the district provided one was lame.

The Earring

One of my boys got an ear pierced and an earring a week or so ago.   Today he lost the earring during lunch recess.  It’s shaped in the shape of a letter S with little fake diamonds on it,  (we HOPE they were fake, if not, someone is an idiot, and I don’t mean the kid).   The shape is odd because it isn’t any of his initials.  Whatever.

He lost it.

After lunch he was pretty upset, he said his mom told him if he lost it, he would get a “whuppin”.  So we took a few minutes and the class all went out and looked for it in the grassy area where he thought he lost it.  No luck.

Awhile later, the class was all excited, one of the kids had apparently stepped on it and the peg had stuck in the bottom of his shoe and he had been walking around on it for awhile.  On concrete part of the time.  It was now bent, and missing about half of the little (we hope) fake diamonds.  I straightened it out, and had him sanitize it with hand sanitizer, then I used an antiseptic wipe on his ear and put it back in.  I keep a bunch of earring backs, hair rubber bands, and assorted other odds and ends that I might need taking care of 5 year olds.

Since technically it is no longer lost, maybe he will be spared the “whuppin”.

One can only hope.

Students and Schoolwide Writing Prompts

Our school has school-wide writing prompts that every student is supposed to respond to each week.  Sometimes it doesn’t work real well when the same writing prompt is intended for kindergarten through 5th grade.  Sometimes we modify a bit for our babies.  The prompt a few weeks ago was, ” If I had a million dollars I would…..”.  My kids think 20 bucks is a lot.  No concept of how much space there is between 20 and 1,000,000.  So I modified it to, “If I had lots of money I would…….”  then lots of money could be anything they thought was lots of money.

It usually works like this for us, (which bears NO resemblance to actual creative writing) I write the prompt in several places around the room and they copy it onto their paper.  In a few cases, I actually write the prompt on a small dry erase board that they can take to their seat.  I have some who can’t see well and need glasses, and I have some who can’t track print and copy from the board without a lot of mistakes.  Then they bring their paper to me or my aide and tell us how they want to complete the prompt.  We then write the last words on a small dry erase board and they take it back to their seats to finish and illustrate.

In normal writing, I would expect them to  use more phonetic spelling without all the help we give them with the dry erase boards.   Anyway all that to talk about one experience today with one little girl.

The prompt was, “My favorite birthday was when…….”.   Most of the kids chose to write about a gift that they received which they thought was especially nice ( although I can’t believe THAT many of them got a puppy for a birthday).  One little girl just sat there looking kind of sad.  I called her over and asked why she wasn’t finishing her paper.  I said, “Don’t you have something that you received as a birthday gift that you liked?”  She almost started to cry and said she’d never received a birthday present.  Since to my knowledge she isn’t Jehovah Witness, I felt really sad for her.   I gave her a quick hug, and then changed the focus a bit and said, “What about your fifth birthday?  I know you like school, you are my best reader (and she is).  Couldn’t you say something like, My best birthday was when I turned 5 and could start school?”  She thought about it for a minute, got a little smile on her face and nodded yes.  So that’s what she did.

Sometimes teaching in schools with a lot of poverty is tough.   I don’t know that I would trade up though.  Years ago, when my daughter was younger, she would spend time both at my school and at my wife’s school, which was a little more up scale (not a lot, but a little).  My daughter used to say that she liked the kids at my school better, they had more personality……   I would tell her, “Oh yeah, they’ve got THAT all right.”  But we knew what she meant.  One of my friends transferred from our Title One school to a significantly more middle class area and she used to complain about how the first grade kids at her new school were little Stepford kids, smart, but really not very original in their thinking, not very creative.

Graphing with Kindergarteners

OH MY HECK!!!!!!

They are making me freak’n CRAZY.  All  I want them to do is tell me the difference between one number and another (within the context of a graph).  5 Apples, 3 Oranges, “How many MORE apples are there than oranges?”  or “How many fewer oranges are there than apples?”  (My aide says it because I’m trying to compare oranges to apples……)

We have HAMMERED on the key words MORE, FEWER, LESS THAN.  We have matched up and counted how many of anything is left, etc, etc.  We’ve approached every way from Saturday,  the ones that get it, get it, the ones that don’t, I wonder if they ever will…….  I’m pretty convinced that it’s developmental and they won’t get it until they are ready.

None-the-less, it’s on the test.  And the test cometh.

Funny Kids

My kids were laughing the other day so I listened to see what they were laughing about.

One of my boys SINGS to himself, everytime he goes to the bathroom.  I don’t think he thinks about the whole class HEARING him when he does it.

Humm, the non stopping, incessantly talking, jabbermouth of a new kid.

He can’t stop.

Talk, talk, talk, talk talk. interrupt, talk some more, interrupt some more, talk, talk, talk………

I told him the other day,  “I bet you would talk if there was a guy behind you with a sword to chop off your head if you talked.”

He just looked at me and then asked, “What kind of sword?”

He was in timeout for talking and interrupting and after a while I asked him if he was ready to be quiet and rejoin the group, which of course made him think he could talk…………. you know,  about talking and not talking………   So I let him stay there some more……..