pencil problems October 6, 2011

Remember this pencil sharpener?  This wonderful, wonderful pencil sharpener (also notable as the first — and only — item I have ever gotten free because of my blog)?  One of my little angels broke it today.  I hadn’t yet told this class that it was off limits, but it was way up high, and only grownups have been using it.  Anyway, he tried to use it and broke it and I am still feeling kind of mad.  I hope our fabulous janitor can fix it; he’s good at fixing things.

If he can’t, I’m buying a new one.  That thing is the only pencil sharpener that really works.

Other pencil problems?  Two of my kids use a fist-grip to hold their pencils, and one of them then bends her wrist at a really strange angle, so that it looks really uncomfortable and difficult to write.  Both of them also write with their arms floating in the air, so I need to work with them on that, as well.  Several of the kids in my class color or write with an extreme amount of pressure.  They rip their papers sometimes, and the little “angel” who broke the pencil sharpener also broke THREE pencils today, simply because he was pressing down so hard.

At art we did leaf rubbings, and some of the kids could do it, and others couldn’t figure it out.  They would color, really hard, over and over in the same place.  They couldn’t figure out that if you already colored that part, then you should move your crayon to a white part of the paper.  That was frustrating, too.  I held their hands and moved them across the paper to show them, but then I felt like I was doing the rubbing for them, so I’d stop.  Then they’d go back to coloring a part of the paper that had no leaf under it, and that they had already colored.

I got a memo from the district yesterday about dysgraphia, and it was pretty interesting.  So we will start to work on improving these skills!

forcing a leftie to write with her right hand September 21, 2011

I have a girl in my class whose parents are from an Asian country (although I’m not really sure if Dad is still in the picture).  Her mother, who has limited English, brings her to class each morning and stands over her as she signs in, making her use her right hand.  This makes it slow going for the girl.   The rest of the morning, she uses her left hand.

I said something to Mom about how it is fine for her daughter to use her left hand, and Mom said firmly, “I don’t like it.”

Should I do anything else?  Is there definitive research that says this may harm her child?  Or should I respect what might be a cultural thing and leave it alone?

an inspiring writing center July 22, 2011

Jessica Meacham has this photo of her writing center on her website:

Is that not a thing of beauty?  I am so inspired to make my writing center more attractive to my students, not to mention, to keep digging for awesome classroom organization photos!

My magic wand really is magic February 25, 2011

So it’s time to return to writer’s workshop, which I first learned about in January of last year.  At our first writer’s workshop meeting, I said, “I’m going to get my magic wand.  Here it is.  Now, I’m going to use magic to turn you all into writers.”  The kids looked at me, totally attentive.  I waved my magic wand (really, my classroom pointer) and said, “Abracadabra!  There, I did it.  You guys are all writers now.  We are going to write stories.”

That was just a spur-of-the-moment idea, but it worked.  The kids totally believed me.

We went to the tables to write true stories of things that have really happened to us for my pre-writing assessment, and they ROCKED.

One little girl, whose native language is not English, drew a picture that clearly showed someone falling off a house.  It turns out that happened to her mom — maybe she was trying to remove snow from the roof?  Anyway, the child told me her story was “My mom fell off my house.”  So I said each word aloud, with a slight emphasis on the first sound, and she wrote down her story this way:  ”MMFFMH.”  In other words, M(y) M(om) F(ell)  of(F) M(y) H(ouse).  Pretty good, huh?

Another child, a real smartie, wrote “I WET T MI MOM WERK” (I went to my mom’s work) all by herself.  Another wrote “IPMNSS” — I P(layed) M(onster) (i)N (the) S(now).

My developmentally lower sweethearts, with either special needs or lack of any kind of literacy support or exposure at home, did well, too.  I thought they would say, “I can’t write!” or “How do you write ___?” or “Can you write it for me?”  Nope, they told me their stories and wrote them down with lots and lots of confidence, not to mention lots and lots of lovely pretend letters.  Yay!

They are STILL writing, two days later.  Two of my highest kids sat down today with my Americorps volunteer, and wrote my morning message.  They would say the words, then she would repeat them, one at a time, and they would write down the words they heard.  It was WAYYY kindergarten or early first grade level work.  I am so proud.

Valentine’s Day has lasted two weeks in my room February 14, 2011

Valentine’s Day has come and gone in my room, but it really was not a one day celebration.

The last time I bought wine, I asked for two empty cardboard boxes with the wine bottle dividers still inside.  Then my Americorps volunteer decorated them on the outside, and put sticker labels on each compartment with the children’s names.

The writing center was then stocked with stickers, cards, markers, stamps, and word cards, and the kids got to work.  They made valentines for each other, and for the adults in the room, and then would go say to someone, “check your mailbox!”  The best part was that the kid who received a valentine note would always say thank you to whoever made it.  When I made valentines for the children, they would hug me.  When they made valentines for me, they would hug me some more.

The writing center can only fit four people at a time, so we had to turn the art center over to valentine-making, as well.  So almost every day for the last two weeks, we had up to ten people at a time making valentines for their classmates and teachers.

It was a love-fest, and I loved every minute of it.  Plus, it seems like a great segue into writer’s workshop, which will start in the next week or two.  If they didn’t before, everyone now knows they can write.

9 days down September 10, 2010

Our theme for September is All About Me (Miss Mellow and I decided to heed the advice we were given at a workshop — we are going to do fewer themes, better), and this past week our focus was on ourselves, namely, our bodies and our feelings.  I did some lessons about recognizing feelings from a social skills curriculum we have, and also some lessons on the parts of our bodies.  The children were particularly interested in their bones and their muscles.  Here are some of the things they told me this week:

“I look five because I eat healthy food but ackshully I’m four.”  (This from one of my boys who just turned four and still looks and acts three…..)

“Mrs. X!  I have muscles!!”  (From a skinny girl who had been practicing hanging from a bar on the playground.)

“Did you know I have bones in my hand?  Look!”

**************

At arrival time there were two parents in the room, getting ready to say goodbye to their respective children.  The dad turned to me and said, “When do you start reading instruction?”  The mom perked up and came over to listen.  I was a bit concerned — do they think their children are bored already?  Do they think preschoolers should be able to read at the beginning of the year or soon after?

But I started talking about the things we will be doing and they relaxed.  I told them that we will soon start learning the letters of the alphabet , and will do it in an order so that we will have words that can be sounded out within the first 4-5 weeks.  We will have readers’ workshop once a week starting in October, and then writers’ workshop once a week in the spring semester.  I talked to them about phonemic awareness, and things they can do at home to support their children.  And I found myself saying, “I’ll have an evening workshop for parents this fall on preschool literacy, so we can cover a lot of this stuff then.”

So now I have to plan a parent workshop for this fall!

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.

Apple’s progress May 3, 2010

Apple is the sweet baby of our class.  She spoke no English at the beginning of the year, and was barely comprehensible in Spanish, either.  She knew no colors or numbers or shapes or letters in either language.  She said nothing, but just smiled a lot.  She had coping skills, and was always in the right place at the right time, gamely trying to do whatever it was we were doing.

Then she fell in love with me, and I started getting daily (even hourly) hugs from her.  She started to come out of her shell, and she started speaking English, one word at a time.  She got excited about writing and started writing me daily love letters, filled with her writing-like scribbles (that went left to right, top to bottom).

At writer’s workshop she understood that she was to tell stories with her drawings.  At first she drew a lot of pictures of her family (her mom was always complete with boobs and nipples), and then she started to branch off.  Now she draws pictures of stories about food that she has eaten with her family.

She knows the color purple.  Miss Slinger taught her how to write her name a few weeks ago.  She can cut with scissors.  She can count to five in English.  She can say sentences with three or four words.

And she is still always happy.  She is our little ray of sunshine and I just love her.

Pumpkin’s progress April 30, 2010

Ahh, Pumpkin.  He continues to be delightful every day.  And he’s not quite the same person he was in September; he has come a loooong way.

Today in the blocks corner he was with Raspberry and another girl, both of whom hate to put away the blocks, and move so slowly that it makes me crazy.  They did much better than usual at cleanup time, but Pumpkin ROCKED.  He was so mature, so independent, picking up blocks and putting them away in exactly the right places, doing it happily, doing it quickly….I was so proud of him.  When we gathered on the carpet for story time I gave him a star on his hand for being so great at cleanup time, and he crowed. “Wow!  Yay!  I got a star!  Whoo hoo!”

At writer’s workshop yesterday, however, he reminded me of his old self — the one who could not hold a conversation to save his life.

“What’s your story about, Pumpkin?”

“This is me.  My mom hit me in the face.”

“She did?  Was it an accident?”  (There is no way his mom hit him in the face on purpose.  Seriously.)

“No!  She hit me in the face!”  He was grinning as he said it.  I replied, “That sounds like a very serious story.  What else goes in the picture?”

Pumpkin didn’t answer, just forged ahead.  Here follows his narrative, with the ellipses standing in for my weak, confused, useless responses.

“Here’s me.  I hit her in the face!  And my mom hit me in the face….And I didn’t get ice cream.  But my dad did, he had ice cream….I didn’t get ice cream.  There was a contest and I didn’t win.  My dad had ice cream…Here’s my dad, here’s me.  I had ice cream.  There was a contest, but I didn’t win….But there was another contest, and then I’ll win….Here’s my mom, she has ice cream….Here’s my mom and my dad and me and we’re eating ice cream…And here’s the flag….And here’s the hot lava!”

you’ve got mail! February 2, 2010

I picked up some empty cardboard wine boxes when I stocked up on wine last time, and today Miss Slinger and I turned them into mailboxes.  The class went wild.  It was the most high-energy centers time we’ve had in long time.  At the art center and the writing center, lots of children were making valentines and writing notes, and then delivering them.  I got several love notes in my mail box, and so did Miss Slinger.

Valentine’s Day is heaven for preschoolers and their teachers.