Day 2 the Second Time

Last week, I wrote about how my class size was small (18 students) and that I feared the fourth grade classes at my school would be reorganized. It happened Friday.

My original students were dispersed, tears were shed (theirs and mine), I was given another teacher's roster, and that teacher was displaced.

So, yesterday was like the first day of school all over again, and today was like the second. I feel horribly behind. This is amplified by the fact that our "specials" started this week. For example, yesterday I was supposed to have music (they have a singing class 30 minutes per week for one semester by a young guy with a guitar, but he was out sick) and art (9 weeks, 50 minutes weekly).and today my students had science lab. I've had very little time with my students, and what time I have had has been teaching procedures, my classroom management plan (which hinges on a daily class meeting prior to dismissal), and diagnostics in writing and math.

In addition, I gained a particularly challenging student who - after hugging me hello this morning - bit a child, tackled a second child and scratched the child's glasses, used his phone during class while lying to me about it, grabbed a child by the hair and pushed him into a tether-ball pole, and called a very sweet girl ugly. I'm a little bit tired.

Please help me be kind to this child. Please help this child be kind to others.

Teach Your Preschooler To Read?

"Reading presents itself first amongst the lessons to be used as instruments of education, although it is open to discussion whether the child should acquire the art unconsciously, from his infancy upwards, or whether the effort should be deferred until he is, say, six or seven, and then made with vigour." (Charlotte Mason, Vol. 1, page 199)

"In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother's first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air."   (Vol. 1, page 43)

"In the first place, it is not her business to entertain the little people: there should be no story-books, no telling of tales, as little talk as possible, and that to some purpose." (Vol. 1, page 45)

Charlotte Mason believed that reading lessons (and other formal schooling) should wait until a child was age six. This is one of the areas with which I disagree with Mason.

While I agree that a child should not be made to sit down at a desk in the early years, I do believe young children should be taught (gently) how to read. I disagree that some children learn "unconsciously," and I can say that having been an early reader and as the mother of an early reader.

When I entered kindergarten, I was four years old. This was in the early 1980s. (A few years ago, in the district where I teach, parents could not send a four-year-old to school. Recently, this was changed so parents can enroll their four-year-olds in something called "Transitional Kindergarten" or T.K. Kindergarten itself is no longer seen as transitional. I digress. T.K. is not a separate class. T.K. students are placed in regular kindergarten classes. If a child successfully completes T.K., the child can move on to first grade. If a child does not successfully complete T.K., the child repeats kindergarten as a kindergartener.) Within the first week of school, my kindergarten teacher told my mother there was nothing she could teach me and that I should be moved into the first grade. For legal reasons, I could not be placed in first grade until I was five years old, so on my fifth birthday - November 7th - two months into school - I moved into Miss Casey's first grade class.

This didn't happen by accident. I didn't just "unconsciously" learn to read. My mother taught me using flashcards and storybooks.

A very little child is capable of seeing the Golden Arches and making the connection that those Golden Arches symbolize McDonald's. If a child can do this, a child can read. (The image at the top of this post is an environmental print alphabet. Preschoolers learn to associate these symbols with what they represent through repeated exposure. This means, even if you aren't doing flashcards with your children, companies like Lego are.)

I did not, as my mother had done with me, start using flashcards with my daughter when she was an infant. However, we did do baby sign language (symbol = meaning) and my daughter was able to understand and use about 20 signs.

When my daughter turned a year old, her Tia Estela gave her a toy that stuck to the refrigerator (Fridge Phonics by LeapFrog) and played each letter's sound in a song. My initial reactions were:

• Isn't it a little early for phonics?
• What's the rush?
• Ugh, it's battery operated. My child's creative growth will be stunted.
• Maybe I can keep it hidden away until she turns two.

I was also grateful to Estela for the present. She's also an elementary school teacher, and an amazing one at that. I fell in love with Fridge Phonics.

So, through play, we started learning letter sounds. My aunt Barbara - a homeschooler - gave me a LeapFrog's Letter Factory DVD. (Battery operated toys AND T.V.?! What kind of parent was I?!)

I love that DVD. It's fabulous. A must-have.

Shortly after my daughter turned two, after my daughter knew all of the letter sounds, I started Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words (cat, can, dog, dot...). And when she was 2 1/2, I bought Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Engelmann.

It was slow going at first because my daughter's attention span was short and I only wanted reading to be a pleasurable experience. Each lesson is broken up into about a dozen minilessons ("tasks") but the title Teach Your Child to Read in 1,200 Lessons probably wouldn't sell as well. We'd do three tasks and that would be that.

Now, my daughter is 3 years 3 months and recently, things just clicked. She completed a whole lesson and wanted to start another one (Mommy was the one who was tired and needed to stop). This is how it's been going for the past week.

So, my 3 year old is on lesson 41, having just read:

The cow sat on a little gate. The cow said, "The gate is hot." She said, "I hate hot gates." She said, "I will run now."

I like Teach Your Child To Read for the most part. But there are problems with it.

For example, when teaching the child sight words such as "said," the script has the parent telling the child to sound it out (lesson after lesson) and "That's how we sound out the word. This is how we say the word." The book does say to say, "It's a funny word." But I think the word should be introduced as a "funny word" (or, as my daughter says, a silly word). All that said, it's not a huge problem.

Another problem I have come across is that children are supposed to sound out "ow" words instead of learning that "ow" says "OW!" - the sound you make when you get pinched.

Teach your young child to read, if the child enjoys it. If not, go ahead and wait. Or, ask yourself if you're having enough fun with the lesson. Think of Mary Poppins:

In every job that must be done,

there is an element of fun.

You find the fun and

SNAP!

The job's a game.

(The above image was found on Pinterest in a Google search for "environmental print.")

Carmen Suzy

A little over a week ago, I overheard my three-year-old talking to herself about someone named "Carmen Suzy." It seems we have entered the imaginary friend phase.

A little bit about Carmen Suzy...

ME: Where was she born?

DAUGHTER: Oh, in North America.



ME: How old is Carmen Suzy?

DAUGHTER: Oh, she's ninety-nine.

ME: Ninety-nine years old?!

DAUGHTER: Yes.

ME: Ninety-nine is a lot of birthday candles.

DAUGHTER: Yes.


ME: Where is Carmen Suzy?

DAUGHTER: Oh, she's at her family's house. She got a giraffe.

ME: A giraffe?

DAUGHTER: Yes. For her zoo.

ME: She has a zoo?

DAUGHTER: Yes, at her house.

ME: I see. It must be nice to have her own zoo.

DAUGHTER: Oh, it is.

A History Diagnostic

This morning (Day 3 of school), I had students make a list of "3 to 5 events that happened before today." Here is some of what they wrote:

1)Dinosaurs were alive.

2)They used carriages.

3)George Washington was the first president.

4)A lot of people died in the World War.

5)I was born August 4, 2005.

6)Dinosaurs went extinct.

7)One time I went to Six Flags.

8)One time on Thanksgiving I got bitten by a spider.

9)Abraham Lincoln was shot.*

10)I learned how to do a backflip at Skyzone.

11)I was on TV.

12)Me and my mom went to Target to get supplies.

13)Robin Williams died.

14)Thanksgiving

15)Independence Day

16)John F. Kennedy got shot in the head.

17)World War II started.

18)The Civil War started.**

19)Abraham Lincoln was born.***

20)A big war was made because of slaves and after the war slaves never existed.****

21)Dinosaurs were born.

22)Dodo birds went extinct.

23)I heard that a famine happened in Mexico.

24)George Washington was born.******

25)I met a girl in our class in first grade.

26)The first black baseball player was Jackie Robinson.

27)When my mommy was little, she cut the ribbon for a park opening.

28)On the first day of school, you were my teacher.

*What the student actually wrote was, "Abraham Lincoln was shot at his daughter's play."

**What the student actually wrote was, "The Silver War started."

***What the student actually wrote was, "Abraham Lincoln was born in 1972."

****I assume this student is referring to the Silver War, I mean, the Civil War.

*****What the student actually wrote was, "I hear George Washington was born in 1976." This information was from a different student than the one who wrote Lincoln was born in 1972.

I also had a student write that George Washington fought in the Civil War and after being president for 8 years "he had to stop so someone else could be the next president."

So as you can see, there are some holes in my students' understanding of history. I'm going to take some of these events and make a wall timeline in my classroom. Then, we can work on filling in blanks. Rather large blanks. 

Fables

Today is the third day of school. I still don't have a full class, but I'm starting a writing unit anyway - Fables.

I started by writing the word "Fables" on the board, and then I read my students "The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs." My students narrated back the story, and I read a second fable - "The Hare and the Tortoise." Students narrated back the story, and I discovered that one little girl had been visualizing a hair not a hare. See how necessary narration is?

Then I asked students to think about what these two stories had in common. Here is the list students brainstormed:

They have characters we don't want to be like.*

Fables are not true.

They have lessons at the end.

They are short.

They have talking animals.

They have magic.

Animals act like humans.

*I taught students the word emulate.

With only a few minutes left before lunch, I asked students if they knew what it's called when characters in a story speak. No one did. So I wrote dialogue on the board. Then I read the first line of "The Goose That Laid Golden Eggs" to my class and asked students what an appropriate line of dialogue for the farmer might be. They liked this a lot.

Tomorrow, my plan is to have them create dialogue for the rest of the story. (The progymnasmata term for this is "amplification.")

Stay tuned...

The First Day of School

Yesterday was the first day of school.

The maximum number of students I'm supposed to have is 30.5. That's right. Thirty and a half students. Don't ask me how that's supposed to work. Maybe one student is supposed to sit in the doorway between my classroom and my neighbor-teacher's classroom.

Yesterday, I had seventeen.

I was happy to be able to ease into the new school year. Teaching seventeen children procedures is much easier than teaching 30 (or 30.5). But I know more students will be added, and I don't enjoy not knowing when, or how many. I don't enjoy not knowing whether or not they will take the students I have already gotten to know away from me, give them to someone else, and give me a whole new set of students. It happened to two fifth grade teachers this morning. I don't enjoy not knowing what my new students will be like. Will they behave? Will they change the dynamics of my room?

With only 17 students, I can be certain that everything I teach, I will have to reteach, so I don't feel rushed to get into content. That's a good thing because the copy machine is broken. It has been since Monday - the day BEFORE school started. Here are two (of the many) things we did yesterday...

1. First Day of School Writing

So, on the first day of school, I started with an on-demand writing assessment. (This doesn't require photocopies.) A writing assignment the first day of school is a way to see what students' needs are, and I also like to compare them (the "before" papers) to students' final writing assignments (the "after" papers).

The prompt I give is this:

Tell me a story.

It has to be true.

It has to be about you.

It has to have a beginning, middle, and end.

You can tell a lot about where a student is writing-wise (and reading-wise) with an assignment like this. You can tell what they know about conventions, whether they know what a story is (as opposed to a descriptive paragraph), which students need a little more support getting started (there are different reasons for this - please don't believe anyone who tells you there's a single solution), which students read a lot (their writing will be more sophisticated; they'll use dialogue, onomatopoeia, similes), and more.

(If you ever wondered why you had to write "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation," I hope the above explanation helps.)

2. Classroom Management

I also taught my new classroom management plan. Last week, I decided to use Marvin Marshall's book Discipline Without Stress, Punishment, or Rewards.

Charlotte Mason didn't believe in rewarding children for doing what they were supposed to. Neither does Marvin Marshall.

Teachers in my district are supposed to post their Rules, Consequences, and Rewards on their classroom walls. When we are evaluated, this is one of the measures of a good teacher. A poster.

This year, my classroom "standards" of behavior are - from Marvin Marshall's website - 

• Do my work
• Have materials
• Be where I belong
• Control myself
• Follow directions

My consequences are simple. I'm not doing a card chart with colored cards (tried that - disliked it a lot - students had to get up to change their card when misbehaving, causing an additional distraction to whatever they had done to warrant changing the card). I'm not doing names on the board with check marks, or a sticker chart, or a class store. If a student doesn't meet a standard of behavior, here are the consequences:

Consequences will be elicited from students as necessary, and directly tied to each particular situation.

How does this work? Well, yesterday when I asked a student who had jumped down the stairs instead of walking down what an appropriate consequence should be, he told me he should lose his recess. (I was thinking he should demonstrate the correct way to walk down the stairs, but what do I know?) I told him that his idea was one possibility and then I presented him with another possibility. He walked down the stairs.

If a student doesn't offer an appropriate consequence, you ask, "What else?" until the student has come up with something you're satisfied with. For example, if a student says, "Call my parents," you can ask, "What else?" and a student might say, "And write a letter of apology."

Because I must post rewards, here is what Marvin Marshall suggests posting:

Students will be encouraged to reflect on the satisfying inner rewards that accompany responsible and high level behavior.  Encouragement and acknowledgement will be given every day!

I did not use an exclamation point on my handwritten poster. I used a period. An exclamation mark was just too much.

Back To School

There are lots of posts about what to do the first day of teaching, but what about the first week?

On Tuesday, I start my 11th year of teaching. Every year, I have the same pre-first-day-anxiety that I had my first year. Maybe more. Definitely more. I liken the feeling to the nightmare where you show up at a place and people are staring at you, and - for the life of you - you can't figure out what they're looking at, that is, until you look down and realize you're not wearing any clothes.

I'd love to say, after having done this for 10 years, that I know what I'm doing. But every year is different. Every child is different. Every year there are different parents and different coworkers and different government mandates. And so, every year, I worry that I won't have solutions to the problems. The teacher will call on me and I won't know the right answer.

To help me alleviate some of my anxiety, I'm reflecting on what I need to do the first week of school. One of the things I need to do is help students transition from 3rd grade and summer to 4th grade and my classroom. Here are 28 things I've done (with the exception of the goody bags) to help students transition:

1. Teach content the first day.
2. Make a seating chart.
3. Introduce yourself.
4. Write and send home a parent letter.
5. Hand out a syllabus.
6. Give a homework assignment on the first day.
7. Do a hands-on group science lesson.
8. Teach procedures.
9. Discuss good study skills.
10. Teach students how to clean up.
11. Teach students where supplies are and how to use them.
12. Discuss safety.
13. Talk about what students can do when they finish early.
14. Give an interest inventory so you can find out about your students.
15. Give a learning style inventory to help students find out about themselves.
16. Share a list of online resources for help with basic skills.
17. Hand out a list of good books for 4th graders.
18. Give students a preview of the kinds of tests you give with sample questions and sample answers.
19. Put in writing your policies about absences, late work, testing procedures, grading, and general behavior, and teach explicitly.
20. Let students know when they can talk to you about topics that don't pertain to the whole class.
21. Let parents know how to reach you (school phone number, school email address) and when you're available to conference.
22. Hand out goody bags. (I never have, but some teachers do.)
23. Explain what plagiarism is and that it is wrong.
24. Discuss the importance of honesty.
25. Talk with a different student every day about their personal interests. (With 30 students, this has to be done over 6 weeks.)
26. Assign students to write about the important things that are going on in their lives. (The past three years, I've asked parents to write me a letter telling me what they think I should know about their children.)
27. Talk about the difference between independent work time and group work time.
28. Find out about students' time commitments outside of school (church, youth orchestra, etc.).