Word wizards, continued March 27, 2009

The children are starting to understand what I’m trying to do with the Word Wizard poster.  I wrote on it the three words for this week — disappointed, excited, and lonely — and then we made tally marks every time we used (or heard someone use) any of the words.

Ruby got it first.  Almost every day in Morning Meeting she has raised her hand to say something like, “I’m excited to go to a meeting with my daddy,” or “I’m excited to go to my Grandma’s house.”  Miss Slinger and I have, unfortunately, had several opportunities to say, “I’m very disappointed in your behavior.”

But the best of all is a little boy we’ll call Russell (for Russell the Sheep, who can’t get to sleep), whose mother sent me an email to let me know that Russell said “I’m disappointed that Daddy didn’t give my little brother enough salad” at dinner the other night.  She didn’t know where he got that word until she saw the letter in his backpack about our Word Wizard words of the week.

going back in time March 25, 2009

Today at calendar time when I pointed to the name of the month and all the children chorused, “March!” — Princess interrupted us with great consternation.  “No!”  she said.  “It’s snowing!!!”

I guess if there were a few stray snowflakes outside, that meant we had gone back in time to winter.  Couldn’t possibly be March anymore, right?

word wizards March 24, 2009

Yesterday flew by in a rush, and I never got to story time.  So today we read On Monday When It Rained, and I put three words on our new Word Wizard poster:

• disappointed
• excited
• lonely

First, though I did a vocabulary pretest.  I gave the children trays to use as lapboards, and papers numbered 1-6.  By each number there was a happy sun picture, and a sad cloud picture.  I said, “If this sentence makes sense, circle the sun.  If it doesn’t make sense, circle the cloud.”  Then I said six sentences, like “When my mom said we were going to the cool new playground, I was excited.”

The whole thing was crazy.  I felt like the assessment itself wasn’t very developmentally appropriate.  These guys are FOUR and they’ve never taken tests before.  Understanding if a sentence made sense was hard enough, but figuring out how to fill out the sheet was really hard.  Miss Slinger was trying not to laugh, and I was trying not to cry.

However, I’m still glad I did it.  When we read the book, we talked about what those three words mean, and how we’re going to keep track of every time we hear someone using those words.  We’ve already got four tally marks on the poster (Miss Slinger:  “I’m so disappointed that you are making so much noise in the hallway.  Oh, thank you for being quiet.  I’m so excited that you were doing such a good job listening to me.”)  And at the end of the week, we’ll do the post-test, and I can see if we’ve made any growth.

I need to figure out a good way to measure if children have learned a particular vocabulary word.  Any ideas?

Wild animals March 21, 2009

I seriously think the kids and I need spring break to come soon.  Tomorrow, please.

On Friday morning I went out to breakfast with two neighbors who are good friends, but whom I had barely seen all winter.  It was a blast catching up with them.  I walked to work — for the first time all year — and was in a wonderful mood when I arrived.

That lasted through the fifteen minutes of journal time, and during my prep when the children were at music.  Then I went to pick them up.  The music teacher greeted me at the door.

“They were like wild animals,” she said.  “You couldn’t pay me enough to spend my day with preschoolers,” and her face showed her exhaustion.

She was right, too.  The rest of the morning was wild.  When they left all my energy was gone, as was my wonderful mood.

Miss Slinger looked at me.  “You wear yourself out, because you feel responsible for everything they do.”

She’s right, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Farmer Duck March 19, 2009

So, have you ever tried to discuss books with a class of urban four year olds, and found that the only emotion words they know are sad, mad, and happy?

We read Farmer Duck today for the second time, and so this time I wanted to ask what the secondary characters were thinking and feeling.  “How did the other animals feel, when they saw Duck was ’sleepy and weepy and tired?’” I asked.

“Sad,” they all said.  No one could say much more than that.  I had to do some modeling of a think-aloud:  “Well, I’m thinking that they must be pretty upset.  They love the duck, and they probably think it isn’t fair for the farmer to stay all day in bed.  They could be feeling frustrated with this terrible situation.”

Then when I asked them, “What is the farmer thinking right now?!” on the page where he wakes up to find the cow, hens, and sheep under his bed, bouncing it around, and making loud noises.

“Sad,” they all said.  WHAT?!  I couldn’t get more than that out of them, so finally I told them, “You know, if I woke up all of a sudden and my bed was bouncing and there were farm animals in my room and they were yelling at me, I’d be really CONFUSED.”

I have decided that we will start studying vocabulary in a more intentional way, and that we will start with emotion words:  upset, angry, proud, excited, worried, embarrassed, confused.  Definitely confused.  I’m going to pick books that deal explicitly with moods and feelings, and pick three words each week to highlight and post on the Word Wizard poster I just made this morning.  We’ll write the words on the poster, refer to it daily, and record each time we hear someone using one of the words, or we ourselves use one in conversation.

Maybe in a few weeks our book discussions can go a little deeper.

the economy, hitting close to home March 19, 2009

I arrived at work today and a friend said to me, with a dazed look on her face, “my husband just got laid off.”

“I’m so sorry!” I said.  “How awful.”

“We’re just numb,” she said, and then we had to go in to our meeting and I couldn’t say anything else. 

Then when school started a girl in my class said, “My daddy just lost his job.”

I stupidly replied, “how scary.”

She looked at me blankly, and then said, irritated, “NO, it’s sad.”

She’s right.  It is very sad.

Mrs. Migraine, again March 18, 2009

I’m not posting much right now, as I’ve had migraines every day for a week.  I got desperate and tried acupuncture today.  I’ll go again every week for three more weeks, and I am very hopeful that it will help. 

I’ll be back to posting soon.

telephone March 14, 2009

Yesterday the bear cave was gone, and the house corner was back.  The Lolas were in there, chattering away in Spanish, when Princess decided to join them.  She turned into a very noisy cat.  Within minutes I heard Princess yelling,

“Teacher!  They’re leaving the house corner!”  She was shocked.

I called to her from my seat at the math center, “Sorry honey.  They are allowed to leave the house corner if they want to.”

Princess sat on the floor of the house corner and pouted.  I felt bad for her; they might have left because she was so loud, or because of the language barrier.  However, after a few busy minutes of ordering bears with some little boys at the math center, I looked up to see that the Lolas were back in the house.  They were busy making food.

Princess was sitting at the table, talking on the “phone.”  (She had our little wooden iron for the house corner ironing board up to her ear.)

“Police?!  I need your help!”  she said, and launched into a long monologue.  I could only get bits and pieces.

At one point, she said, “They’re just talking in Spanish!  And I can’t understand them!” 

After a while I noticed that Edward, who was seated at the lego table, right behind Princess with his back to hers, was talking into his hand.  He had decided she was talking to him on her pretend phone, and so he was talking back!

They had a long conversation, during which time they never turned to look at each other, and Edward never stopped building his legos.

Finally, he had enough.  “Bye! ” he said.  And hung up.

Princess yelled, “Edward!” into the phone, then held it out to look at it.  “What?!” she said, then “Humph!” and hung it up.

Miss Slinger and I were dissolved in giggles.

“was there blood?!” March 9, 2009

Today I sat with Ruby at the writing center. After she was done coloring some bears, I asked her if she’d like to tell me a bear story, and that I would write it down, and later, read it to the class.  She agreed with enthusiasm.  Here is her story, as well as I can remember it:

“The bears were walking.  Then they saw a store.  There were people in it.  The bears ate all the people.  And the kids were all safe.  Then the bears saw a strange house.  There were robbers in it.  The bears went in and got caught.  But then they got away and they ate all the robbers.  The end.”

This story had an electrifying effect on my class, when I read it to them at storytime.

Owen said, his eyes gleaming, “Was there blood?!”

“No,” I said firmly, “there was no mention of blood.”

I changed the subject.  “Tomorrow I’ll be at the writing center if you’d like me to write down your bear story.”

“Mine is going to be scary!” said Owen.

“Mine is going to be really scary!” said Swimmy.

I think I will be surrounded by boys and scary bear stories tomorrow.  I can’t wait.

Grumpy Bird March 8, 2009

I dare you to read this book to your students (or your own children) when you are having a bad day.

There is no way it will not cheer you up.