Taking Reading Buddies to the Next Level
My students have been working with first grade reading buddies since the beginning of the year. During this time, the first graders have been reading from the book boxes while the fourth graders played the role of active listeners. On occasion, the buddies would take turns reading, still from the first graders’ book boxes, and a few of the students worked directly with one of the three teachers on comprehension and fluency skills.
Just before the winter break, though, the two first grade teachers and I talked and decided we wanted to take buddy reading to a higher level. Instead of just reading together, we wanted all of the students to participate in some comprehension work. One of the teachers was able to find a wide variety of graphic organisers that she has introduced to some of her more advanced readers, and we decided to use these with all of the students during our buddy reading time.
We were originally going to introduce them last week but there were some changes in our schedule that would have made it less than ideal, so we put it off until today. Before going down to the first grade classroom, I talked to my class about the graphic organisers and the type of things they should be looking for while reading. The organisers focus on summarising the text, so I asked my students what the key parts of a summary are. They identified the characters, setting, plot, and main idea.
When we got together with our buddies, I showed all of the students the organiser ans showed how it had a space for characters, setting, problem, and solution. I asked them to tell me what characters are, and, with coaching from one of the first grade teachers, a student described them as the actors in the story, whether human or animal. When asked what the setting is, one of the first graders eagerly raised his hand and said, “The setting is where the action takes place!” His teacher gave him a fist-bump for that awesome definition and I gave him a double high-five. He was super excited to remember what they had been discussing in their class! The fourth graders helped their buddies understand what the problem and solution of the story meant, and then we set them loose to read and respond!
When our thirty minutes was up, I collected the organisers that had been completed. Those pairs that hadn’t finished put their incomplete papers into their book boxes so they can finish next week. I will be looking over the ones that were turned in today and am going to put them up on the bulletin board outside my classroom for everyone to see!
Losing My Voice
There are so many wonderful things that we did today! We had a special visit from a scientist who works at the University of Illinois, we did some great work on learning the order of operations in math, and we discussed the difference between thin and thick writing. (There are different ways different teachers describe writing, but I’ve chosen to use the thin and thick metaphor.)
However, I’ve tried to keep my blog posts focused on one major topic, even if I mark multiple categories for linking on the sidebar. And there is one thing that has been more on my mind today than anything else: I am losing my voice.
As a teacher, I talk. A lot. It is a critical part of my job. Not that there aren’t teachers who teach without talking. It is just that I do. So when my voice starts going out, I get a little nervous.
I have had a fairly persistent cough over the past six years, ever since I did my student teaching in a first grade classroom in Paxton, Illinois. I’ve grown accustomed to this cough, even though it is a bit annoying from time to time. Yesterday, though, my voice got a little scratchy. I made sure to drink lots of herbal infusions (also known as herbal tea) and got some strong throat lozenges. Despite all of my best efforts, my voice seems to be getting worse, not better. However, I am hoping that this is one of those cases where my voice getting worse is actually a sign that I am on the mend.
When I got to school this morning, I was worried about how the day would go. You see, talking isn’t the only thing that I do all day every day. I also have to project my voice. As you might imagine, projecting my voice when I can hardly speak is nearly impossible. So I had to spend my day speaking in normal conversational tones, rather than projecting my voice across a room. Fortunately, my students were very understanding of the situation. Some even wrote me notes wishing me a speedy recovery. I certainly hope so! As much as I am glad my class can follow directions even when I am not speaking very loudly, I already miss being able to use inflections in my voice as I read aloud and provide examples while teaching.
Buddy Reading
Last year I was one of the three new classroom teachers hired in my building. Two of us were first year teachers and we ended up attending several workshops together and collaborating on a variety of projects. One of the collaborations we did was for buddy reading. My fourth grade students were paired up with second grade class once a week to do shared reading with one another. It was a great success and we made plans to do it again this year. (more…)
They Keep Going and Going and Going…
Several weeks ago, I made the decision to use some of the framework of the President’s Challenge for physical fitness as the foundation for my students’ physical education time. We spent much of the first quarter following a play-model of P.E., mostly in the form of dodgeball. We moved on to other activities, but I wanted to see what my students could do.
After a couple of weeks of doing push-ups, sit-ups/curl-ups, jumping jacks, and laps around the gym, I saw a first grade teacher working with her class in the gym as they did a small relay race of sorts. I thought it’d be fun to do with my students, so I divided them by boys and girls and set up the basic concept: they would run the length of the gym and back, tag the next team member, and repeat until everyone was done. The class was really excited about this, even though it was just running back and forth.
Today was our third time doing the relay. I had them warm up and get in position. I told them that they would do a practice race first, but that wasn’t what ended up happening. We have more girls than boys in our class, so a few of the boys race twice to even it out. But after all the girls had run once, they started over without me stopping them. The boys did the same thing. I kept an eye on the clock as I watched them keep racing.
I figured they’d be worn out after ten, fifteen minutes, tops. But they kept going, so I let them. Thirty minutes after they started, they were still going strong, although the boys had started sitting down when it wasn’t their turn to race. After we hit the thirty-minute mark, I decided it was time to call time on the running. After having them run for such a long time, I made them walk a few laps around the gym to cool down. As they did so, I told them about how muscles develop and how it is just as important to cool down after exercise as it is to warm up before. I also had to decide who won the relay race and, after brief consideration, I declared the girls to be winners in terms of stamina and endurance, since none of them sat down.
I think some of the boys felt this was unfair, which led to a brief discussion about how we can assess performance in different ways. If we were just going on speed or completion, the boys would have won. But we can also think about form, endurance, stamina, sportsmanship, and teamwork. We wrapped up our P.E. time with the students sitting in a circle and each sharing something positive about the other team. Some of the students just said, “Good job,” and left it at that. Others shared observations of sportsmanship. This is a precursor of an activity we are going to start in full force after the winter break, but I’ll wait until I actually implement that before really getting into it.
The rest of the day was fairly typical, with math, literacy, and work on our projects. By the end of the day, I was definitely exhausted! Crazy to remember that we are down to our final five days of school before the break! And I am still wearing a different tie each day! Yesterday I told my inquiry group I was on tie number 24, but I forgot about the two days I wore t-shirts, which means today was actually tie number 23, and I still have a bunch more to go!
Hulk Rage
Today I was a first grade teacher at Dr. Howard Elementary in Champaign. I actually worked with this class several months ago, and I’d had a fairly decent experience. I have a general belief that classes improve over time, but this was not true for today.
In fact, the class was considerably worse than they had been at the beginning of the year. Instead of having one or two students challenging limits and pushing buttons, I had nine out of seventeen. It was chaotic and nearly unmanageable.
Their teacher uses the lights in the classroom as a signal for the students to reset (stop, think about what they are doing, and start making better choices). Every teacher has a different management plan, and I try to follow each plan as best as I can. At first, the class responded well to the lights being turned off: they all got back in their seats, stopped what they were doing, and put their heads down. But then they would go right back to misbehaving after the lights were turned back on.
I tried to demonstrate that I was serious about the need for them to reset, and so I stopped everything again by turning off the lights. Of course, as soon as the lights went back on, so did the misbehaviour. And I can’t exactly have a class work all day in the dark. So the day was stop, go, stop, go, stop, go.
All. Day. Long.
After lunch, things were even worse. All of a sudden I had pencils, pens, markers, erasers, toys, and tissue boxes flying across the room. I tried some of my other methods of management: I simply sat down and refused to respond to any students until everyone stopped what they were doing. This works really well with most classes.
Not so much with this one. Things got worse. And worse. And worse.
And then the name calling started. Followed by the profanities.
Did I mention that these kids are in first grade? They are all about seven years old. And yet they were swearing at each other. It completely blew my mind.
And so I blew up at them. Actually, I just made it sound like I blew up. I was in complete control and knew exactly what I was saying and how I was saying it. They stopped then. Hoo boy, did they stop. But I hate when I have to raise my voice, and I hate it even more when I have to actually yell. But when everything else fails and I start to fear for the safety of the students in my classroom, I don’t have time to clap my hands, turn off the lights, or talk sweetly. And so I have to turn on the Hulk Rage:
Well, it worked for a couple of minutes. Then, just before the class went all crazy again, the assistant principal came in.
Because she could hear me.
From her office.
Across the building.
She talked to the class, threatened to haul some of them off to her office, and then left. About a minute later, I had to call for her to come back and take one of the boys. I was tempted to ask her to take four more, but I wanted to see what would happen with the biggest instigator gone.
It seemed to work. I finally had the class working for the last 45 minutes of the day.
I don’t say it often, but today is definitely a TGIF day. Also, we have a nice three-day weekend ahead of us. I’m ready for a long break!
Movies and Cupcakes
Today I was a 1st grade teacher at Robeson Elementary in Champaign. The assignment was only two and a half hours long. I would normally turn down such an assignment, as I prefer to work for a full day, but I had no assignment this morning, so it worked out quite well for me. And I was able to come in at last minute for a teacher who needed to take her daughter to the doctor to treat a nasty bout of warts on her foot.
The students had PE first thing when I arrived, then they were watching a movie with the rest of the first graders as part of a Earth Day celebrations. The movie was the Disney Nature film, Oceans. After the movie, we came back to the classroom where we celebrated a birthday for one of the girls in the class. With such an easy afternoon, you’d think that everything would have gone really well.
Unfortunately, it was the Thursday before a 4-day weekend, and the students all over the building were a bit antsy. The class did not do too well in PE (they got 2 points out of the 5 possible). There was a lot of talking during the movie, despite numerous warnings from the other first grade teachers. And then I had a lot of kids running around the room during birthday treats. All of this was after their teachers had talked to them a lot about good behaviour and rewards for meeting expectations. Of course, they are in first grade, which means most of them are 6 or 7 years old, and they are still learning self-control. But I have seen these first graders demonstrate the ability to do what is expected before, so I know they can do it again.
Brilliance on the Fly
Today I was a first grade teacher at Robeson Elementary in Champaign during the afternoon. I was certain I’d blogged about this class before but when I couldn’t find anything, I had to go back and look at my calendar. It turns out the last time I taught in this class was six months ago (October 8). I didn’t start writing this blog until the 14th, which is why they haven’t made it into here yet. This was my second time subbing for this particular teacher, but my third time in the class, because the two Reading Recovery teachers split their duties–one teaches the class in the morning and does RR in the afternoon, the other does RR in the morning and teaches the afternoon.
The class has a lot of wonderful, intelligent, sweet kids in it, and I would have loved to go back sooner, but my schedule was such that when the teachers needed a sub, I was already assigned elsewhere. I was excited to be back with them and was shocked to realise I still knew most of their names. It only took me a few minutes to recall all of them. Go me, right?!
So one of the things I have noticed as a substitute is that some teachers have a habit of giving extremely detailed lesson plans that outline the entire day down to the minute. These plans often expect far more content to be taught than is possible, but it makes sure that the subs don’t run into awkward periods of not knowing what to do. Other teachers provide extremely bare-bones plans that assume that a five-minute activity will take the entire class period. (A high school student I know in Elgin, Illinois, regularly experiences this and complains to me all the time that her teachers don’t leave better plans.) The plans today were fairly well balanced in the middle, but some of the activities leaned toward the over-estimated the time required side.
Of course, I didn’t let this bother me. If nothing else, this entire week has been one of me acting quickly on my feet and keeping things moving. This is why I get paid the big bucks, right? (I wish!) The first assignment for the day was for the students to do a handwriting worksheet (remember, these are first graders). Some of them got done right away and wanted to know what to do next. I wasn’t about to have them start on the next assignment and quickly find myself with 20 boys and girls each doing something different, so I thought quickly and said, “All right, here’s what I want you to do: turn the paper to the backside and write a note to [your teacher] telling her what you did today. You can also draw her a picture.” Soon I had everyone doing this (the plans had expected the handwriting to take 15 minutes, and just everyone was done in under 10). I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. Instead of writing a few words about lunch or recess, the students wrote about reading independently, reading to a partner, writing stories, and learning about outer space. Several also asked their teacher if she was feeling well and told her how much they love having her teach first grade. I should have snapped a picture of some of them but that didn’t occur to me until I got home.
Still, it was a great way to not just fill the time, but to fill it with a worthwhile activity. The students were able to practice handwriting, spelling, letter-writing, and communication rather than just colouring or, worse, having nothing to do and wandering around the room bugging other students. Instead, the students were busily engaged in meaningful work as they applied things they have been learning all year long. It was both awesome and a great way to wrap up the week!
A Lone Man
Today I was a reading specialist at Sangamon Elementary in Mahomet. I’ve only taught at Sangamon one other time, which was back in November, and I had a great experience, as I have had every time I’ve taught in Mahomet. So I was looking forward to returning to the school.
My day consisted of listening to 1st and 2nd grade students read quietly to themselves, then practice writing sight words on marker boards. They also played some matching games the teacher had created, which simply reinforced their awareness of sight words. Not a tough day at all. It was actually a fairly good experience working with these kids, and I look forward to when I can return.
I had an odd experience when I was standing by my door, though. The students in the halls would pause when they saw me and then crane their necks to keep looking at me as long as they could. It took me a while to figure out why. You see, of all the faculty and staff at Sangamon, there are only two men: the principal and one of the custodians. So when the students see a male teacher, they see an oddity. It is very similar to when I was doing my student teaching in Paxton. The smaller school districts in more rural areas tend to have fewer male teachers. I’m not sure why that is, though. I have always known that I would be a minority in my profession. It is kind of strange when I am the only man.
Such is my job, though. Some days I am surrounded by men, other days I am surrounded by women. However, one thing remains the same: I am always surrounded by professionals who take their jobs seriously and want the very best for their young charges.
