Friday December 11, 2009

We made it.  Today was hard for all of us.  I woke up with a migraine, and Miss Slinger was tired and stressed from having her car get towed because of the snow (she spent the evening — and a lot of money — getting it back).  The kids, like the little emotional barometers they are, reacted accordingly.  There is a little girl in my class I haven’t introduced you to yet — let’s call her Papaya — who is absolutely terrific.  She is smart and funny and I’m just crazy about her.

Papaya hit two kids and told another — repeatedly — “you are not my friend.”  It was bizarre, and utterly unlike her.

Cherry, not suprisingly, had a hard time following directions all morning and it was really frustrating for me.  Chutney towed the line, however.

Our new girl had a tantrum and sobbed for the last 15 minutes of class (because I asked her to clean up the markers and she didn’t want to).

Zucchini looked a little stressed by all the hubbub, and the tone of my increasingly exasperated voice.  He kept raising his hand to tell me what the class was supposed to be doing.  It was kind of cute.

Pumpkin, amazingly, did fine.  He has really come a long way.  Okay, he fell apart when it was time to go home and he had to put on his snowpants.  “My pants are bunched up in there!  I hate it!” he wailed.  But until the last few minutes, he was fine.

And now that it is Friday evening and I am at home, so am I.

marvelous mittens day December 5, 2009

Every year in December we celebrate Special Days.  The idea came from some December preschool ideas book, and I’m firmly committed to the idea.  It gives me a wonderful way to teach the children about winter, and to introduce some of the holidays that are celebrated in December in a low-key way.  It also gives me a way to channel the excitement that builds in December into some age-appropriate activities.  But mostly I do these special days because they bring joyfulness and magic to the classroom.

First up:  Marvelous Mittens Day.  The children come in that morning to find a giant mitten traced on the floor of the meeting area with masking tape.  This in itself is very exciting and mysterious.  At centers time we make mitten ornaments (see above) and we made mittens that I ordered from Oriental Trading that Miss Slinger placed in their memory books.  By the time Miss Slinger and I were done with getting 20 children through two mitten-making centers, we were utterly exhausted.

Then came story time.  We had done some preparation by reading Jan Brett’s The Mitten the day before.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it’s an old folktale about a boy who loses a mitten in the snow, where it is found by a series of animals who crawl in to get warm.  The mitten gets stretched to ridiculous proportions (I enjoy asking my class, “can a bear really fit into a mitten?”) and then finally the bear sneezes, everyone flies out, and when the mitten is in the air, the boy finds it again.

I discovered Jan Brett’s website a long time ago, and made masks of each of the animals in the mitten.  Instead of using the pictures as masks, however, I turned them into necklaces of sorts, and we just hang them around the children’s necks.  We act out the story for the first time on Mittens Day, with me reading/paraphrasing the book and acting as MC/narrator.

At the end the actors lined up and bowed, everyone else clapped, and the kids said, “Can we do it again?”

It was time to go home, but I promised we could, and we have.  Every single day since then.

snapshots of the next day November 5, 2009

This morning I put on my lovely new red coat and went out to meet the buses as they arrived.  When bus 3 came, I caught Cherry and Chutney as they got off and had them wait with me.  When all the kids were gone, the driver got off, and I told her that I was their teacher, and that we were there to apologize to her for their behavior last week.

“Cherry, please repeat this after me.  I’m sorry I stood up on the bus.”

Cherry hung her head.  “I’m sorry I stood up on the bus.”

“I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen to you.”

“I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen to you.”

“I’m sorry I used bad words.”

“I’m sorry I used bad words.”

“It will never happen again.”

“It will never happen again, ” Cherry promised.

I went through the same routine with Chutney,  minus the part about the bad words.  The driver at this point was looking really surprised and also pleased.  I don’t think she ever meets her bus riders’ teachers.

I found out her name (let’s call her Maria), introduced her formally to the girls, and explained that it is her job to keep them safe.  It is their job to be respectful to her, and to listen to her, so that she can keep them safe.  I said that their behavior last week was unacceptable, and if it ever happened again, Maria would let me know and I would give them a consequence in the classroom.

I held their hands and we went back to class, talking excitedly about our third reading of Knuffle Bunny.  I am hopeful that we will not have a repeat of that behavior.  They really are smart and wonderful girls.

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At centers time Cherry chose the reading corner.  She read and re-read Knuffle Bunny out loud; she has memorized the whole damn thing.  I think I need to call her mom and compliment her — she’s the mom who told me that when she found out she was pregnant, she started buying children’s books, and now Cherry has FOUR HUNDRED books at home.  You can tell this is a well-read child.

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Plum was absent, so I guess she really was still sick yesterday.  Zucchini had a wonderful time in blocks today, and no pee accidents.  He kept building towers and showing me — “Look, cylinders!  And this is a cylinder, too!”  My new student wore a coat to school today.  The room was clean, but when Zucchini opened the block shelf it was a disaster (I, in my usual anal-retentive way, have a specific place for each block to go).  I suppose I will have to visit Miss Mellow’s class again to explain how to clean up the blocks, as I forgot to mention that yesterday.

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We finished the day with our third reading of Knuffle Bunny, where the children reconstruct the story and tell it to me, and then we got to watch the video, using my video data projector.  It was wonderful, and a great way to end the morning.

the little indignities of preschool October 12, 2009

Two little girls had pee accidents this morning.  One of them made it to the bathroom, but not quite to the toilet.  The other — Cherry — announced loudly at recess, “Mrs. X., I peed my pants!” from the top of the climber.  We had just enough time for Miss Slinger to take her to the nurse for a change of clothes before we had to put her on the bus to go home.

Pumpkin’s shoe was untied at morning meeting.  This meant he couldn’t stop fussing with it, and despite my warning — “Don’t unlace your shoe again!” — he unlaced it completely.  The lace was too frayed to put back in, so while I continued with calendar and the morning message, Miss Slinger relaced his shoe with a new lace.  (I’ve got a box with fresh underwear, socks, shoelaces, and some donated hats and mittens.  A preschool teacher should always be prepared!)

Miss Slinger, like all non-teacher employees of our district, had to fill out this long form about every aspect of her job and her duties.  She told me it was kind of depressing — when she writes it down it looks like her job is a lot of making copies and cutting things out (not to mention restringing laces and taking pee accidents to the nurse).  My job has all kinds of things like that in it, but it also entails reading, doing research, writing lesson plans, teaching reading, and so on.  Those sorts of things help to balance out the snotty noses and how-to-aim-in-the-toilet lessons and the other less dignified aspects of my job.

There should have been a place on that form for Miss Slinger to write down how often she gives hugs, resolves arguments, teaches art, or helps to maintain a fairly organized classroom.  But if it’s hard for a teacher to feel appreciated and valuable, how much harder it must  be for an assistant teacher.

tools of the mind September 27, 2009

An article in this morning’s New York Times magazine has set my brain on fire.  It’s about a curriculum called Tools of the Mind that seeks to teach preschoolers self-control and executive function.  I remember reading this article from NPR on it earlier this year, and am really interested in putting some of these ideas into practice.

One thing in the NYT article that really spoke to me was the importance of play, and how so many kindergartens these days are going to a pure academic focus.  That’s certainly true at my school, and I feel lucky that in pre-K, I can give my students centers time (free play) every day.  But — from what I read in the article, I could be doing a better job.  I’m going to give the article to Miss Slinger to read, and then have a talk with her to see what the two of us can do together in our classroom.  For one thing, it might be a good idea to do some modeling and scaffolding of pretend play, to help the children learn how to do it, or to have richer experiences when they are in the house corner.

Anyone else know anything about Tools of the Mind and teaching executive function to preschoolers that they can share with me?

checking in September 17, 2009

This is a snuggly class.  They are constantly touching me.  I call it “checking in.”  A child comes up to me, holds my hand for a minute, and then runs back to play.  Another child comes and leans on me for a while, and then when he leaves, another child comes over for a hug.  They don’t even talk about it, they just come and get their little snuggle, and off they go.

We read “Snuggle Wuggle” today, and I told them that we were reading it because they are so snuggly.  A few of them then proudly announced that they were planning to snuggle me at recess.  And sure enough, several children came over to me at different times to lean on me.

getting ready for the first day of school September 3, 2009

The past two weeks have whizzed by and I have been simply too exhausted to post.  I will try to be better from here on in, especially since I am starting to get into the groove.  (Waking up at 6 am again is quite painful, but I’ve responded by hurling myself out of bed to work out on the treadmill each morning, before I’m awake enough to talk myself out of it, and also by going to bed at 9:30 (!) each night.)

I am not fond of the first day of school.  You might even say I hate it.  I’m accustomed to a class that hums along like a well-oiled machine, and on the first day, things definitely do NOT hum along smoothly.  It occurs to me, each first day when I look at the children’s little faces, that they don’t know anything about my classroom, and it is now my job to teach them EVERYTHING.  Sort of a daunting task, but then I just dig in and get started.

Actually, I get started before the first day of school.  Here are some of the things I do to prepare:

• I write out a class list of first names in alphabetical order.  I will use this constantly in the first week.  My class always lines up in alphabetical order.
• I make nametags for the cubbies, and put them in alphabetical order, so that when we are lined up in the hall, the child whose name starts with A is in front of her cubby, and the child whose name starts with Z is in front of his cubby.
• I make a different set of laminated nametags, and put velcro on the backs (okay, actually, I ask Miss Slinger to do this), to mark the spots on the carpet where I want each child to sit.  (We’ve got limited space for morning meeting, so I assign spots.  It works wonderfully — no one pushes or shoves to sit up front, and they all have their own space.)  I make a map of where each child should go, based on what little I know about them, and post it near my chair in the meeting area.)
• I label hanging files in a basket so that each child has a “take-home file.”  This is where they put their finished work; I do this to avoid children going out to the hall to their backpacks, and problems arising because they are unsupervised.  Of course, the files are in ABC order, and this year, I used my new labeler to make them, so they look even neater than usual.
• I make a class list on a chart I’ve copied from a “first days of school” teacher book, write the names on (in ABC order, of course!), and then make copies.  One copy goes on a clipboard that hangs from a hook near the door.  This is where all dismissal and bus info goes.  On the chart’s top axis I write out options for dismissal that include the after-school program, the preK bus, the special ed buses, or being picked up by a parent.  I use this as we head out each day so that every child goes to the right place.
• I make colored nametags, four of each color.  Then I decide (based on the little info I have) which color group each child goes in, so that the groups will work well together.  On the first day of school the red group gets to go to the art center.  On the second day of school, I open a second center, and green gets to go there, and blue gets to go to art.  On the third day I open a third center, and so on and so forth until all the centers are opened and every group has been to every center.

I hope this is helpful to those of you who are getting ready for YOUR first days of school!

rites of fall August 18, 2009

I went to the teacher store this morning.  I spent $102, which actually shows restraint on my part.  Usually it’s $140.  Picking out labels for the cubbies for me and Ms. Mellow was really hard; I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find nametags that were a) attractive, b) color-coded (I’m green and she’s blue), and c)small enough to fit in the cubbies.

I stopped in at the office this morning and managed to cajole our secretary into giving me my class list; this afternoon I’m going to mail out a letter about school supplies and our ice cream social next Tuesday.

And I went to my physical therapy appointment; so far, so good.  I’ve had no migraines for 2 1/2 weeks!  I think I’m ready to go back to work.

successes and failures June 19, 2009

At the end of the year I returned to the children’s assessment portfolios, and once again asked them questions about letters, sounds, numbers, colors, shapes, etc.  Miss Slinger did her final assessment measuring vocabulary, rhyming, and alliteration.  And then I looked at all the results and thought about them.

You know, when it’s the end of the year, you realize it’s too late to have done anything differently!

On the bright side, I rock at teaching letters and sounds.  Everyone did really well with recognizing capital and lowercase letters, and in identifying letter sounds.  I think most of my class knows at least 18 capitals, 18 lowercase, and 15 sounds.  Many of them know all 26 in each category, and even my special education students did really well.  So I feel good about sending them off to kindergarten, ready to go with learning how to read.

On the not-as-bright side, while my kids did okay with rhyming and alliteration, several of them did not meet the benchmark.  I do teach rhyming and alliteration, but not as a daily routine, the way I do with the letters.  And I have to admit, I’m kind of haphazard about fitting in my phonemic awareness stuff.

When I look back on the year, and look ahead to the new year, I definitely know what I want to improve.  I did a great job with my read-alouds and book discussions two years ago, but not as well this past year.  I’d like to teach phonemic awareness skills in a systematic, logical progression.  I’d like to teach more content with each theme — maybe even do something on the first day (what do we know about zoos?  what do we WANT to know?) and the last day (what did we learn about zoos?).  And I’m still struggling to teach science, so I’m thinking about doing it sort of indirectly, with more nature and outdoor time.

field day May 21, 2009

(Sorry I haven’t posted recently.  I had two straight weeks of migraines.  Plus it’s THAT time of year.  Teachers are tired.)

Today was field day and the kids were wild.  This was the most hyper and overstimulated my class has ever been on field day.  They couldn’t stop picking up dirt and throwing pebbles and pushing each other.  Princess would grab someone and push them and wail at the same time, “he’s PUSHING me!”

However, we had fun.  I bet they all went home and took rock-solid naps.