I heart my job

In the midst of the excitement of walking around the bright red fire truck that came to visit for fire safety week one of my little ones exclaimed, "When I grow up, I want to be a FIRE TRUCK!"

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Magical is too sick to return to school this year but partner-in-crime and I agreed to deliver his home-bound services. We take turns going to his house every night to read books, work on patterning skills, counting, writing his letters, and all the other fun kindergarten activities he's missing out on.

Yesterday we got to the end of a Piggy and Gerald book and Magical was in a great mood. He'd giggled over all Piggy & Gerald's silly antics, predicted what would happen next, and gasped when his predictions came true. I turned the last page to reveal the end pages, where, if you are familiar with Mo Willem's books, there is always one picture of the Pigeon hidden amongst the other illustrations. Most kids LOVE finding the Pigeon in Mo's non-pigeon books and act as though they just broke a cryptic code for the CIA when they spot the Pigeon where he doesn't belong.

Not Magical.

Magical waved his finger at the pigeon and shouted, "That LIAR bird!  THAT SNEAKY LIAR BIRD!  I HATE THAT BIRD.  I HATE HIM.  He doesn't go there. He's always where he doesn't belong. He needs to stay in HIS OWN BOOKS!  SNEAKY LIAR BIRD"

Magical's mother, who had no idea who the pigeon was or why Magical was so upset looked horrified. I quickly closed the book to remove the offending bird from sight and asked Magical if he'd like me to bring a Pigeon book next time so he could see the Pigeon where he belonged.

"Yes. He needs to go back to where he belongs." he agreed solemnly, and we quickly moved on to our next activity that did not involve any sneaky-liar pigeons.

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In the midst of a very exciting game of Around the World Pixie could not stay in her seat. She bounced up and down so much that I ended sitting behind her to give her gentle reminders to stay seated. She responded to my prompts immediately but would quickly forget and would try to scurry across the carpet to see the flash cards on the other side.
The little girl sitting beside us whispered to me, "Mrs. Lipstick, it's like you're training a puppy."

I was initially horrified by this observation. What am I doing to poor Pixie that makes another child think of training a puppy??  But the more I thought about it she's kind of right. Pixie is just SO EXCITED by everything that she gets ahead of herself. She wants to do the right thing, but she forgets. It probably is like being with an excitable puppy who wants to please but is so overcome with excitement that she needs reminders.

Regardless, I'm going to carefully watch how I interact with Pixie to be sure it's not dog-training-like. I'm not using any method with her that I wouldn't use with another child, it's just a lot more frequent. We're not doing ABA or rewarding her with treats or anything that makes me think of puppy-training. Still, I absolutely do not want to be giving the other students the impression that Pixie is a pet, pet-like, or needs to be trained like one.

um, ouch

"So, you're a lawyer" the lab technician assigned to take my blood asked brusquely as he prepared his equipment.
"No," I laughed, "I'm just dressed this way because I had an important meeting.  I teach special education" I added proudly.
"Special education?" the already scowling man seemed to furrow his brow even more. "There is nothing wrong with those children," he began as he shoved the needle into my arm. "You people want to make them out to be different than everyone else, give them special labels and medicine and there is nothing wrong with them."

I sat, mute, while he continued to draw my blood. I considered defending myself, my kids, and my profession, but I realized the precarious situation I was in. The man was holding a needle in my arm and was not being overly gentle about it.

"With my daughter, it was all her mother's fault," he went on, "I told the school if they said she was special ed I would sue them"
He yanked the needle from my arm and I pulled my arm back to safety. Again, I considered a defense, but realized he was now holding a vile of my blood.  He could magically lose it and force me to come back to re-live this experience. I meekly (and shamefully) nodded in agreement, gathered my things and left.

From the hallway I continued to hear, "This country! So quick to medicate every child, drug them up, throw them away...."  I walked faster.

Perhaps if I hadn't corrected his assumption that I was a lawyer the whole experience would have been far more pleasant.  Then again, maybe he was hoping to ask my advice on suing his school...

participation?

My new focus with my little morning group is what participation looks like. I've noticed that more than a few of my kids tend to zone out on the rug during lessons, call out about things that are unrelated to the topic, or look around the room and try to get their friends' attention. I was chatting with my partner-in-crime about one, very sweet, little boy in particular who just absolutely refuses to participate. At times he even closes his eyes on the rug and almost curls up into a ball. As our discussion went on we realized that maybe he didn't understand that part of his job in school was to participate on the rug. If this was true, then we needed to first teach him that he was expected to participate before we began taking more extreme measures.

Sure enough, when I asked my small group what their job on the rug was they all told me the list of kindergarten rules. "Hands to yourself", "Sit criss-cross applesauce" "Listen to the teacher". No one said anything about participating.

We labeled what participating looks like- listening, raising your hand, thinking hard. Then we've been taking pictures of them participating and talking about each part of participation. Pixie loves this. With her crazy strong verbal skills she immediately picked up on the long word participation. She admitted that she has a hard time wiggling around on the rug (and oh friends, she does), but she also latched on to the fact that she is suppose to raise her hand to ask questions on the rug. (She never had a problem with this before, but knowing it is her job seems to have made her very happy).

My little quiet friend has no problem participating in our small group and seemed to understand the point. Back in his classroom I sat beside him, encouraging him to raise his hand and participating to questions I knew he knew the answer to. (Or even the "what is your favorite color" questions every child in the class was frantically waving their hand to answer.)  He kept glaring at him, clearly disgruntled with my presence and my expectation. On the second day of this he leaned over and in a rather harsh whisper said, "I am NOT raising my hand."

I was immediately taken back to when I was a child and I also absolutely refused to participate. Part of this may have come from my fourth grade teacher who decided I spoke too softly and would call on me and then walk out of the classroom and stand in the hallway. She'd wait for me to speak loud enough for her to hear me before she would come back in, while the whole class giggled and teased me for my quiet voice. It may have been after that when I gave up participating altogether. Even in college I usually refused to participate. On numerous occasions I told my professors that I understood the participation grade could lower me from an A to a B, but regardless, I wasn't going to participate. I learn better, I explained, when I am taking the information in and not worrying about what to say. I'd opt to write papers instead of participating in discussions. I had no problems with presentations or even my thesis defense, but when it came to spontaneous participation, I drew a line in the sand. Absolutely not. (This all changed in my education classes and now people usually can't get me to shut up).

So when this little boy growled that he was not raising his hand I felt his pain. Here I was demanding him to do something he clearly wasn't comfortable with, most likely culturally as well as his own personality. How much do I push?  Anyone whose never had a problem participating believes that we need to break the habit of being quiet on the rug. And I'd certainly like this little one to participate- life will be easier if he is comfortable chiming in during class, but how much can I force him? I know from personal experience that one can still be attending even if one isn't raising their hand. If I force this little one to participate like my fourth grade teacher did to me, am I only making it worse?

I've decided to focus on what he needs to do to show us that he's thinking hard. He may not need to raise his hand, but he needs to be showing us he's listening- no more curling up into a ball. We try to add in lots of whole-class chances for participation (if you think the answer is a but your hand on top of your head, if you think the answer is b, but wiggle your ear, or show me the math answer on your fingers) and I told him his job is to always participate in those polls so we know he is listening. And after I mentioned those to him, he participated in every single one that day- almost a 100 percent improvement over the day before. So maybe my first step is to make whole-group participation safe and then we'll slowly work our way into raising our hand. I'm not going to give up on hoping he'll become comfortable raising his hand, but I'm going to ease into it- baby steps.

double ack

We've been working on understanding and using the hundreds chart in kindergarten. Even when I taught first grade I found that students frequently confused the teen numbers with 40, 50, 60, etc. I always made a big deal of being silly when saying these numbers- an old voice for a number ending with 0 and a higher pitched teenage voice for a teen number. When kids say a number I ask, "Is that a teenager number or an old number" and have them repeat it so it is clear.

Today, in the midst of a rousing game of Magic Number (everyone stands in a circle and counts off a set amount of numbers- today we were counting from 10 to 20. Any time someone gets the "magic number" (today was 20) that person has to sit down. It's amazing how frequently they can play the game and never get tired of it...)

At first they were saying their 13s and 14s in a way that sounded very similar to thirty and forty. I did my little teenager number vs old number, but this time added in, "you know, a teenager like Justin Bieber".

Shrieks. As though Justin Bieber himself just entered the room.

I momentarily regretted the reference. But then the strangest thing happened. As the game went on every single child very clearly stated their numbers, with no confusion. The girls did it with giggles, as though they were invoking Bieber in the mere mention of a number close to his age. As much as the Bieber-craze pains me I have to admit I appreciate an easy teaching point.

ack

"Oh, Ms. S" I heard one of my kindergarten students sigh as the instructional assistant helped her wash her hands, "I have Beber-fever."

The little one is learning to speak English, but she certainly has a grasp of pop culture...

writing buddies

A third grader listens as her kinder buddy plans out where to put the words on the page

Every year my school has a writing celebration. We go all out- every child and teacher receives a button that says "I Heart Writing". This year we even gave buttons to the visiting parents. There is a breakfast for the parents, each class does some sort of writing celebration to celebrate their published pieces, a whole-class text, or the students' works in progress. Many of the classes cover their classrooms with decorations, one of my fav teachers makes a red carpet for her kids to walk on. This year parnter-in-crime and I covered our tables with red table cloths and cut-out hearts. Each table held a centerpiece of tissue-paper flowers the children made themselves. I've written about it in past years here and here.

In the afternoon every class buddies up with a class on another grade level to share their writing. This year my partner-in-crime and the third grade teacher she was paired with decided to have the kids write together instead of sharing their published pieces.  It was amazing to watch!  I loved watching the third graders patiently plan their writing with the kindergartners, encouraging them to come up with a story idea to put down on paper. The third graders wrote, but all of them took the time to read what they were writing back to the kindergartners so that the five year olds could read the stories themselves. Then the kinders added the illustrations. One set of sisters- a third grader and the kindergartner worked hard on writing a story about what a snowball fight they had. The two leaned laughed and joked as they worked on adding those funny details about who hit who in the face with the snow. Some pairs of boys wrote books about  cars and the third graders took the time to encourage the kinders to think of sound-words to go along with their pictures.

Luckily the most patient third grade girl was paired with Pixie. When her big eyes looked at me and whispered, "Um, Mrs. Lipstick, could you help me with her?" I wished there was more I could do. The excitement for Pixie was just too much for her to sit still...

Standing back and watching the writing process between students in such different grades made me so proud of my school and the commitment we place on writing. For third graders to be able to conference with kindergartners as though they were teachers truly shows that they have been immersed in the culture of writing themselves for so long that they know exactly what is expected. And for the third graders and the kinders to be able to work together so easily on one writing piece shows that as a school we really are teaching writing in much the same way throughout the grade levels, despite the different expectations for each grade.

I heart my school, and of course, I heart writing.

Sing It!

I think my all-time favorite center is the singing center. My first year teaching I got the idea from Debbie Miller's book, Reading with Meaning (If you teach K-3 and are not familiar with this book I highly recommend you run to go get yourself a copy. Just the pictures of her classroom make me drool. She has wonderful ideas and great read-aloud lists to support her teaching topics.)

In one of her first chapters she writes about the importance of using songs both as shared reading and also having song books available for independent reading. Familiar songs instantly become familiar texts once the words are put into their hands, and for many of them it becomes something they can "read" beyond small books with two words on each page. For older readers it promotes fluency- because it is a familiar song their eyes and brain communicate quickly as they process the words, giving them practice for reading regular texts quickly. Looking at print while singing is a great solution for the robotic reading we tend to get when we do shared reading. Yes, we want everyone to stay together when we read as a class, but half the time we are sending the message to the kids that we read slowly. Songs help to counter act that.

As a classroom teacher I milked our familiar songs for all they were worth. One new song a week and we used it as a text for word study, identifying new word wall words, and of course, independent reading. Every week the children went to the "singing center" where they were able to get a copy of the new song, illustrate it, and put it into their song book. Once in their book they were free to read that song as well as any previous songs from our thick stack.  I set up the classroom so that the singing center was facing the air conditioning/heater and was away from reading groups. The children knew they needed to face the heater so that it would (somewhat) drown-out their voices during reading workshop. We sang all the time- during transitions, when we needed a wiggle break, or when we were walking outside so the kids knew each song by heart. (I should add I have a terrible singing voice. It's really painful. But after reading Debbie Miller's description of the power of songs in early literacy I decided that wouldn't stop me. The poor intern-teachers stuck in my room had to act like I wasn't killing their ears.)

This year Pixie ROCKS the singing center. She struggles with the texts we read in guided reading- simple texts with two or three words on a page, she struggles with letter names and their sounds, but she ROCKS the singing center. She could sit there for hours singing the songs over and over again, running her fingers over the words as she sings, with an intensity and focus we rarely see from her at other times. When it's her turn at the center we know her entire group will be singing along with her. Sometimes louder than we'd like, but we've all gotten so use to her singing that it doesn't distract the other readers.

Yesterday after our cupcake adventure we sent the kids to the rug with their reading bags for independent reading. The minute the instructions were out of my mouth I shuddered at what I'd just told them to do. Every kindergartner on the rug for independent reading?  The rug is not that big. There was no way it was going to end well, but we needed to get them away from the tables so we could do one last wipe-down to make sure no cake batter or raw egg was clinging a chair anywhere.

And yet- even with all of them on the rug they pulled out their guided reading books and started to read. And when they were finished with their guided reading books Pixie pulled out her singing book and started singing. Quickly everyone else in the class followed suite. Our whole class sat having a sing-along, independently, as we teachers cleaned in the background. They sang for about 20 minutes with no adult interaction. They weren't all singing the same song so the carpet was full of different versions of color songs, the autumn leaves song, the gathering song, but it didn't matter. Everyone was happy and on task even after the excitement of cooking.  It was pure magic.