thinking big August 4, 2011

Our children are away at camp, so last night my husband and I had a Wednesday date for dinner and a movie (“Crazy, Stupid, Love” — highly recommended).  At dinner, he said, “Do you have any goals for this coming school year?”

And with that, I was off.

• I want to have a clean desk.  Every day.  I’m going to have to rethink a lot of things about storage and daily routines, but it would be so great to have a clean desk.
• I want to reduce clutter in the classroom.
• I want to have a class binder that has all my important info in one place, including…
• …my lesson plans, which I still want to figure out how to do on the computer.  I want to come up with a sort of spreadsheet/chart that blocks off the hours in the day, where I can write what we will be doing each chunk of time.
• I want to be better at teaching rhyming and alliteration.
• I want to write more repeated interactive readaloud lesson plans.
• I want to make time to do the RIRA discussions every week.
• I want to do water science with the water table.  I planned on doing it last year, but didn’t get around to it.
• I want to work on teaching vocabulary, and continue working on creating my own set of vocabulary cards.

“So, resting on your laurels, right?” he joked.

It’s August, and my time at home is slowly vanishing, but I am starting to get in the right mindset.  I think I will be happy to go back, when the time comes.

either I’m very lucky or I’m some sort of genius May 16, 2011

On Friday we had a visitor who was there to observe one of my students, who is being assessed for possible special ed services.  She sat during centers time and watched and took notes.

The art center was full of kids making ants out of black paper and then adding glitter glue to them.  This was thrilling, but they managed to stay calm and focused.  The usual suspects sat at the lego table, and we had a small bunch working hard at the writing center.  I was at the games table playing Go Fish, as I mentioned in my last post.  The morning was busy and productive, and the kids were calm and content.

Later, when she was leaving, the visitor said, “You have a really great bunch of kids this year.”

I agreed with her, of course.  They are a lovely group of children.

But in my head, I was thinking, “There is a reason they are so busy and happy and well-behaved.  There is a reason they have learned so much this year.  There is a reason this classroom is so calm and runs so smoothly.”

And that would be me.  (I know, modest much?)

rites of spring April 15, 2011

*I am going over the winter pre-reading assessment results and trying to focus on all the kids who were in the red zone for rhyming, alliteration, vocabulary, letter names, and/or letter sounds, and spending one-one-one time with them.  So is every other adult who works or volunteers in my room….There are always kids being pulled aside to work on something.

*The spring assessment starts in two weeks.  AUGH.  Will my babies be ready?  Have I prepared them?  Did I do a good enough job?!  I keep rolling my shoulders and taking deep breaths so I don’t get daily migraines from stress and worry.

*I had a meeting in the principal’s office today to talk about the spring preK registration for next year’s babies.  I look back to some of this year’s kids when they came to visit last spring and they were TINY.

*We’re learning about plants and seeds and planted grass (the boring kind) and radishes, plus a few marigolds, carrots, and alyssum.  The window sill is crowded with little cups.  On Monday if something has sprouted the kids will be over the moon with joy.

*We’re learning about spring, and today read Old Bear, by Kevin Henkes.  The pictures were beautiful.

*The kids have spring fever.  They are being quite difficult, for them.  (For another class, they would probably still seem like angels.)  The loud voices and lack of listening are tiring me out.

*The weather is terribly unpredictable.  When it is very cold out, they come to school with no jackets.  When it is very warm, they come to school in their winter jackets.  The parents are apparently unable to find out (tv, radio, computer) what the day’s weather will be.  Meanwhile, every morning I stand in my closet and my brain fritzes out while I try to figure out what to wear.  After changing clothes three times I’m late for school and have to settle for whatever it is I’m wearing.  Winter was easy — classic turtleneck sweater (I used to wear cashmere, but I’m not quite as young as I used to be and find cotton works better now), bootcut jeans, Dansko clogs.  Summer will be easy — crewneck tee, cropped pants, Dansko sandals.  Spring clothes?  No clue.

needy December 8, 2010

So I’ve got two students receiving special education services, one of whom also receives speech.  I’ve got another student who is about to start receiving special education services, and she also receives counseling (we have an on-site counseling center).  I’ve got a fourth student who will be referred for special ed soon, and who will probably qualify, and will also probably qualify for speech services.  I’ve got a fifth student who is about to start receiving counseling, and a sixth who has been referred.  I’ve got a seventh student who I will refer for speech, and an eighth student who is in the intervention/documentation part of the speech referral process.

Whew!  I love this class.  They are sweet and special.  And young.  And they need a lot of help with their communication skills — conversation, vocabulary, articulation.  And they are….a bit needy.

I will do what I can.

What shall we learn?, continued October 26, 2010

This is the first card I’ve got posted above my meeting area blackboard.  Here’s what I do to help the children meet these goals:

• Copy/print own name:  The children are expected to sign in every day.  Some of them could write their names already, but others had no idea at all.  I showed them that they can scribble or do pretend writing, and a few of them are still relying on that method.  Others have started to write the first letter of their names to stand for the whole name.  When they are ready, I show them how to write the next letter, and so on.  By the end of the year they will all be able to write their first names.  For the kids who already could, I show them how to write their names with only the first letter capitalized, instead of writing it in all caps.  When they are ready, I might even teach them how to write their last names.  Note:  sometimes I don’t have to do anything.  Their parents and older siblings learn that they are expected to write their names, and teach them how to do it at home.
• Be able to listen to a story:  This one seems easy, but I have a few students who really aren’t listening.  One little girl doesn’t understand (native English speaker, but with some developmental delays) so she plasters a polite grin on her face and then tunes out.  Some of them don’t listen because they don’t speak English.   We have story time daily, and sometimes twice a day.  My Americorps member and my assistant read to children one-on-one sometimes, particularly with the kids who aren’t being read to at home.  I try to make story time alive and exciting by only choosing really good books to read — and by throwing in lots of Mo Willems!
• Answer questions about a story:  This week I finally started to do my weekly “special story” — a repeated interactive readaloud.  Only some of the kids can answer my questions about the story — others raise their hands and then offer an answer to a question I didn’t ask.  (“What do you think the signmaker was thinking when he came back to town and the people chased him into the woods?”  J:  “He run away.”)  My hope is that with a repeated interactive readaloud every week, we will learn how to think about stories, talk about them, and learn how to answer more abstract questions.
• Learn uppercase letters/learn lowercase letters/learn letter sounds:  This is a part of our daily routine, as I have mentioned here before.

Tomorrow:  our next set of goals.

What shall we learn? October 24, 2010

The early childhood department of my school district has, in the last few years, worked hard to come up with end-of-the-year goals that are based on our state standards, and are supported by our assessments, , portfolios, report cards, and parent conference goal-setting forms.  Everything all works together.  They wrote up a list of goals on a single sheet, to share with parents, but I decided to enlarge them and share them with the kids.

The signs I made are posted above our meeting area board, and it’s at about this point in the year that I point them out to the children, read the goals aloud, and start referring to them daily as we work and play.  I started doing this a few years ago, while training to be a teacher coach.  I learned that accountability for students is just as important as accountability for adults, and wondered how that would translate to preschool.

I already listed the things we were learning about on our morning message, but decided to be more deliberate in telling the children what we were doing and why.  When I do a repeated interactive read-aloud, or reader’s workshop, the children learn that there is a purpose:  to love books and become great readers.  The list of goals tells the children what they should know to get ready for kindergarten.  “This is our job,” I say, and the children nod, serious and proud.

We’re still fingerpainting, playing house, and messing with shaving cream.  But we all have a shared purpose, and I think it brings us closer and takes us farther.

so many different ways to fail May 11, 2010

I suppose I could have titled this post everyone has different strengths (and weaknesses), or maybe nobody can do it all (but we should die trying).

But right now I just feel like a failure.  I went through our portfolios to see how the kids are doing with colors, shapes, recognizing numbers, counting to ten with one-to-one correspondence, counting to 30 (or higher), and understanding concepts like up/down, same/different, over/under, and first/last.

Sure, plenty of kids were doing fine.  But a surprisingly large number still do not know all four basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle), cannot name all the numbers 0-10, or count to 30 (which is our district’s expectation).  The child with the sort of spectrum-like behavior still does not know the number thirteen, so when counting, I have to say this kid can only count to twelve accurately (you mark the number before their first mistake as the number they can count to).  In the fall it was twelve, and in the winter it was twelve, and now in the spring — still twelve!

Pumpkin can count to ten (yay!) and knows all his colors, but he still doesn’t know the shapes or numbers.  Apple can’t do anything — no shapes, numbers, colors, concepts, patterning, anything.  Of course, I am going to refer her to the evaluation team to see if she’s special ed (ya think?!).

We have another assessment coming up for vocabulary, rhyming, and alliteration, and I shudder to think how they will do on those.  So now I feel like the rest of the year is going to be a scramble to catch up.  Yes, we can write stories and sound out words.  Several of my kids can read and write independently.  But for so many to be lost on the basic skills makes me feel frustrated and sad.  And like a failure.

teachers and time January 11, 2010

So I’m reading this Atlantic Monthly article about “What Makes a Good Teacher,” and thinking about the finding that good teachers spend a lot of time preparing for their classes.  And each morning lately I have had trouble getting through everything I need to do, so time is on my mind.

I understand why spending a lot of time on preparation helps a teacher be a good teacher, and I feel bad about not spending enough of my own time on preparation these days.  It’s harder for me to be willing to do it now — back when I had little kids at home and little kids at school my whole life and all my time was about little kids needing me.  Now my children are older and more independent, and I’m ready to claim some of my time back.  It’s hard to keep coming in to work early and staying late, and so I just don’t do it as much anymore.  I guard my private time fiercely — I think I’ve earned the right to read some novels, and I know that if I devote all my time to the needs of all the different children in my life, I will become stressed and unhappy, which won’t be good for any of them, whether they be my sons or my students.

Then when I’m at work, time is an issue.  There is so much that I’d like to do — or need to do — each day, that it is hard to get to it all.  Today we watched a clip from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and we visited National Geographic kids to watch videos about fish (we particularly liked the one about the mola), and we visited Starfall to learn about the letter L, and those were just the things we did using the video data projector.  We also had gym class, and centers time (of course), and morning meeting.  In my role as mentor teacher, I am supposed to be assessing my kids for writing workshop (a pre-assessment to gauge their progress as we get into the writer’s workshop process, which is next up on our staff development plan), but I decided to put it off until tomorrow, and do an intro to writer’s workshop instead of reader’s workshop.  Or maybe try to do both, if I shorten centers time.  Argh.

There’s also my internal to-do list.  A person from the early childhood department came this morning to do a letters and sounds assessment with my class, because I’ve been to busy to get it done myself.  (It was great that she came — I know I’m lucky to have that kind of support.)  I remembered to track down the social worker who speaks Spanish to talk to the child I’ve been worrying about as a possible case of neglect.  I forgot to get any portfolio assessment done at centers time.  I almost forgot to write the morning message or teach the class about the letter L.  I ran out of time for story time.  And I have lots of things to do as a mentor — books about teaching writing to kids that I need to read, and observation reports that I need to finish.

At the end of the morning, however, there was extra time.  The bus was late picking up the children.  We huddled inside the door, waiting, and we sang songs, practiced counting in English and Spanish, and then talked about lunch.  I told them I was going to have chicken and rice for my lunch — and then the children helped me remember the phrase arroz con pollo to describe it.  The Latino children’s faces glowed, and they told me, “I eat that, too!”