Monday, December 1, 2014

Monday Morning: Moments to get up for.

It's Monday morning after Thanksgiving break. Hard to get out of bed and back into the swing of school after the holiday. Yet there are a few moments from last week that stuck with me and make me excited to be getting back to the kids:

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"How many sentences do you have?" one of my co-teachers asked a student. "Two? Then you need two periods."
The student nodded energetically and then neatly wrote ".." at the end of her writing. Two periods, exactly.

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I was watching a kindergarten student write what he was thankful for. Since I was trying to assess his ability of being able to say a word slowly, isolate the sounds, and record it on the page, I was holding myself back from helping him. He very earnestly said "bideo-games. bbbb-iiii-ddddd-o games." and then carefully wrote a bedo. Pretty good for a kindergartner, especially if you think you've been playing bideo games all your life, and not video games.

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Another kindergarten student got up from the carpet in the middle of a lesson and went to his backpack. He pulled out his winter scarf and carefully arranged it around his neck. The kindergarten aid quickly came over to him and requested that he put it away since we were inside and he didn't need it. He looked at her, hurt and confused. "But you have one!" he said. At that moment I realized that all three teachers in the classroom- the classroom teacher, the aid, and I- all had on decorate scarves. In fact the majority of the teachers at our school had scarves on that day. No wonder my friend thought it was totally appropriate to wear one too. If the teachers wear them as fashion accessories, why can't a five year old boy?

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After a fourth grade guided reading group where we read an African folktale I was sending the kids back to class. I was quite a few steps behind the two boys and they had forgotten my presence.
"The hen totally died at the end," one said. "See, it says she's gone."
"That doesn't mean they cooked her!" the other said with desperation. "Maybe she escaped."
"But the book means to not be greedy," the first argued back. "So if you are greedy you get cooked."
"But it said, 'traded a full belly for freedom'" the second tried again, "so maybe at the end she escaped and got her freedom and was hungry now."
"She got eaten," the first said as they rounded the corner and I couldn't hear their debate anymore.

If I'd tried to lead that discussion the boys would have stared at me as though I had three heads. Apparently when I'm not around they can get pretty passionate about their reading.

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