i am thankful for

Today we rushed through Friday assessments so that we could move on to more exciting things - like learning about Thanksgiving! I read my students a story called Thanksgiving Day and then we shared what we were thankful for. My kinders had some great responses (surprise, surprise) such as:

"I am thankful that I can burp."

"I am thankful for my friends, family, and neighbors."

 "I am thankful for God in my life."

"I am thankful for my mom because she wants to take me and my sister to Phoenix to see my cousins and eat a lot of food for Thanksgiving."

"I am thankful for no school tomorrow."

"I am thankful for my cousins."

"I am thankful for my baby brother."

"I am thankful that my sister lets me play her games."

"I am thankful for my mom teaching me to eat chicken."

I wrapped things up by saying that I was thankful that my mom and dad are coming to Gallup to celebrate Thanksgiving with me. It was a pretty good sharing circle.

In the afternoon we read Bear Says Thanks. We had read Bear Snores On earlier this year and the students loved the characters. Therefore I splurged this morning at the book fair and purchased the book to read to my kinders this year, and all of those that are to come. When we finished reading, we made some hand and foot turkey crafts. I think that they turned out pretty darned cute and that families will love them.

Self Proclaimed Turkey King and Turkey Queen

cause and effect

The kinders are going crazy. They can taste the looming Thanksgiving vacation. One more day. We can do this.

Today I salvaged our day today by introducing Rube Goldberg machines. We're studying cause and effect this week, so it fit with the curriculum and it enchanted my kinders. They were in heaven. Anyone walking past my classroom at several points during the day would have heard my students oohing and aahing. To make things better, at the end of the day, they could tell me what cause and effect means!

We were without specials this afternoon, so I moved our math interventions to specials time, and then we experimented. My kinders used materials from the classroom to create their own "Rube Goldberg Machines." Now, being kindergarteners, these machines were really more like a mess of materials, but a lot of cause and effect was going on. 

Here's a little snippet of the end of my day. I hope yours was as exciting!

Now that you've seen what my kinders made of Rube Goldberg, if you have never seen one, or didn't realize what you were watching, here is the video that entranced my class.

you work

Yesterday morning, during sharing time, we talked about things that we like to do. My students talked about liking to play, ride bikes, play sports, and do art. When it was my turn to share, my kinders immediately said, "You like to run!" (They've been paying attention!) I said, "Yes, I like to run, and I will go run this afternoon after work." They looked at me flabbergasted. "You WORK?!?" 

I suppose that it is a good thing that they do not think of school as work. And for the most part, I don't really think of school as work either, unless I have been here for over ten hours. I love my job. My kinders are fantastic and they surprise me every day. If this is what work is, I'll take it!

* This was intended to be posted yesterday, but I got a little carried away with said run!

tech tech tech

I'm a fan of technology. I find that it keeps my kinders a little more engaged with a new component of their education, it provides to hook to deeper learning. Today, there are so many different ways of incorporating technology into education that you could drown in it. As a new teacher, I think that I float on top of the pool pretty well, with only the occasional wave to leave me sputtering and wondering what on earth is going on. I think that for many others however, this is not the case.

This semester I have been taking a Technology in Education course as a part of my graduate degree plan. A lot of the activities have been mundane and mostly just time consuming, mindless activities. I came to the realization throughout the course though that this was not the case for all of my classmates. I feel as though I have been fortunate in being able to grow up with technology surrounding me in one way or another. My grandfather had a computer for almost as long as I can remember. My family got a home computer sometime when I was in middle school. In elementary school I was one of the fortunate ones that was able to play the original black and green Oregon Trail on giant floppy discs. I've just adapted and adjusted with the changes as they have come. When I don't get it, my mister does, and I'm happy with that.

Today I wrapped up my final assignment for my technology class (and am now essentially done with grad school for the semester, woohoo!) and I led a technology training for the teachers that work with me. The state of New Mexico is making changes regarding how it evaluates teachers. A part of this is to upload artifacts to a state website so that those who are removed enough from education to be called policy makers can judge whether or not I am an effective teacher by looking at a couple of PDFs. Making and uploading PDFs is now easy as can be with a couple of apps (Tiny Scan and Dropbox). I opened my mouth last week at a grade level professional development session with my principal about how easy this was and next thing I knew I was on the agenda for today's staff meeting to teach everyone how to do it. Overall the training went well. I prepped the other teachers with an email encouraging them to sign up for Dropbox and come prepared with questions. Most of them did and we worked out any remaining glitches this afternoon. I do however, have some teachers that did not grow up with technology as I have. As a result, small group trainings will now ensue and hopefully the technology that our school has purchased for us (including iPads) will be used more often and effectively. Of course, we'll see how much of my free time that I am rejoicing in by having finished grad school for a little while is now used up by helping others. I guess that's the price I pay for opening my big mouth.

Today was not all new-fangled technology though. Some of my students earned innovation time today and as a result I was presented with this fantastic water airplane!

My faceless inventor!

fun friday

It's that day of the week again! Fridays are always a breath of fresh air. They may be really crazy, but they are also fulfilling in that I can see how much progress my kinders are making. Some are jumping leaps and bounds, others are moving forward like inchworms. Either way, they are making progress.

Once success story from today came during reading assessments. At the end of the first quarter I gained a new student. She came without strong foundations in any subject area, but she is catching up  quickly. Today our assessment was on blending (sounding out) C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonat) words that began with 'r' and also on reading the words she, with, me. 

During the first couple of weeks that this little kinder was in my class she would look at me and say "It's too hard," when we did reading assessments. Then she started picking up sight words and would get points for those. Today, she sat down confidently and sounded out her words. She ended up receiving an 80%! After six weeks in our class, she earned a proficient score! I was (and obviously still am) really excited. We high-fived and I told her how proud of her I was. 

It was a good day.

go with the flow

This morning I was working with a small group on letter identification and they just about had me rolling on the floor with laughter. While they may be slow in picking up their letter names, they are pretty quick on their feet when it comes to other funds of knowledge.

The activity that we were doing involved me showing students letter flash cards. They take an imaginary picture of the card and then write it in the air and identify it. When I showed the letter 'p' the following conversation ensued:

Me: "What letter did you just write?"

Student: " 'q' "

Me: "That's close. This letter is standing on his leg. The 'q' is balancing on his tail."

Student: "A cow has a tail too."

I eventually just told the students that the letter was 'p'. I heard all about animal tails in the meantime. Perhaps it was just a method of distraction, but I was amused and had a good time. I think they did too. Sometimes you just need to go with the flow and have a good time - otherwise, you may just miss out on a learning opportunity. I'm not sure if I found mine today, but perhaps tomorrow they'll remember that 'q' has a tail like a cow and that 'p' stands on his leg. I'll just have to wait and see.

long day

It's been a long and full day. Teaching then grad school. But here's a look at what I did today!

Building sight words

Math manupilatives

back at it

Having a three day weekend was such a blessing. I had time to do a little bit of grad school work, to begin making Christmas gifts, and to run a lot. In essence, I had me time. Sometimes as a teacher it is so easy to get wrapped up in the little ones that surround you day in and day out that you put your own needs on the back burner. I was able to rejuvenate and jump right back into the swing of things this morning.

We had a great Tuesday. We talked about the plot in stories, about verbs, about citizenship, and the numbers eighteen and nineteen. The kinders picked up on some of the things, others (such as plot) will take a fair amount of review. Whatever the case, we're back into the swing of things. We have a week and a half to keep on swinging until we're off for a whole week to celebrate Thanksgiving. We'll need to see how quickly we get back into the swing of things after that!

One highlight for today was having one of my little learners write her first name all by herself three times unassisted! We have been working so hard and it seems like this little break was what her brain needed to make things click. Wahoo! Success! This same little learner was also a rock star in small group around the world today. She is finally getting her numbers (1 - 10) down (with the exception of 9). Progress!

friday

It's Friday. More importantly, it's a Friday before a long weekend. The kiddos were acting as if they were ready. So we did what all kindergarteners should do. We played blocks and kitchen and made the most out of the final 20 minutes of our school day.

just another day

Not a whole lot of excitement in Room 1 Kindergarten today. We're in a groove and gliding to the end of the week - which is tomorrow! And then we have a three day weekend. Thank goodness for that. And thank goodness for the Veterans that we will be celebrating on that day.

Today we continued our practice in comparing and contrasting in language arts. We reviewed our numbers 11 - 17 by playing a fun dice rolling game and filling in ten frames. We practiced writing our numbers and did some thank you cards for a donorschoose.org book project that was funded this summer. (I thought that we were all ready for this - there are some great pictures, but we tried writing without lines. I hope you enjoy them funders!)

All in all it was a good day. Now I'm happily at home and settling in to do some Christmas crafting since the mister has a family involvement night at school and won't be home until late, late, late.

venn diagrams and counting beads

Today pretty much consisted of more kindergarten awesomeness. In language arts we are learning how to compare and contrast. My kinders compared two of their classmates and came up with a fantastic Venn Diagram. My favorite similarity is that both of the students were wearing their shoes on the correct feet.

I recommend zooming on on the "same" category.

In math I have some that are still struggling with their numbers one to ten. Today in their intervention group they practiced number identification and counting. They had to name the number at the top of each pipe cleaner and then string that many beads on to it. They did pretty well for it being the first attempt, but we will need to keep on keeping on and really stress these numbers (still, after 13 weeks). That's just what we do in Room 1 Kindergarten.

My nifty bead charts (sometimes Pinterest has such fantastic ideas)

assembly

Today our school sponsored an African Dance and Drumming assembly in the afternoon. There was a troupe of four brothers from Senegal that were energetic, entertaining, and engaging. They danced, teachers danced, and students danced. We all had a great time. (And yes, I was one of the teachers pulled to dance.)

Dancing Duel

Getting the teachers to jump (I'm the one in teal).

After the assembly came to a close, I seized the opportunity to answer my students questions about Senegal and Africa. Then they did a journal writing entry about what they saw. At the end of the day the conversation turned to a more serious note when one of my students told me that she liked the dancing but she didn't like the Africans. When I asked her why she told be because they were black. I asked why it mattered and she wasn't sure. I asked her if she would like me if I was purple and she said of course. I said good, because I would still be the same person. Our skin color doesn't matter, it is who we are and how we act that matters. We were on our way out for parent pick up at that point and her mom got her right away, so we couldn't talk for long. Hopefully a seed of equality was planted though.

early release

Today we had a half day. Since it's hard to have any meaningful instruction on half days, kindergarten decided to use the day to do unit benchmark tests for both language arts and math. I am happy to report that my kinders did a pretty awesome job. Of the thirteen students that came to school today (another reason to avoid meaningful instruction - poor attendance) ten scored proficient on both the math and language arts assessments. I can now alter my strategic intervention groups to provide more intensive support to those students still needing to master skills from our first quarter (plus a couple of weeks) of instruction.

I wish that the day had remained pretty awesome. However, our professional development was teaching other teachers how to use the online resources for our content area materials. I played on my computer. Oh well, at least we were out early.

To end on a positive note though, we played some sight words around the world this morning while we were waiting for busses to arrive. The kinders were super excited and cheering one another on. Every student won at least one word. They're rock stars!

And, as an added bonus, I had a great "things they say" this morning:

" Mrs. Hall, do you know what I did yesterday? We had dirt in our house. And I dug in it. And I found a T-Rex bone. Then I found another one. Then we found two skulls. Then my dad said that we had to burry them again after he fixed the pipes."

I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but this kiddo was super excited about his story. He shared it as soon as he walked into the classroom. Then he told all of his friends during breakfast. Then he shared again during our morning sharing time. Either he's going to be an amazing author or story teller one day, or there just happen to be dinosaur bones in the foundation of his house.

everything but the kitchen sink and then some

What a busy couple of days! On Friday we were go, go, go in Room 1 Kindergarten. We had our weekly review sessions followed by our end of week assessments in reading and in math. I was observed by my principal for our lovely new state evaluation system for teachers. We had a rushed special at the computer lab and then wrapped up the day with a parade to celebrate the close of Red Ribbon Week (a week against bullying and drugs).

After school was over I squeezed in the finishing touches on prep work for the coming week as well as a little bit of grad school work, and then I was thrown back in the trenches. My school had our annual Fall Festival Friday night and I was on the face painting crew. With my iPad on hand I was able to look up whatever designs the kiddos wanted and then tried to carry them out with the horrible face paints that the school provided. Grease paints may wash off easily, but it's really hard to get any color to show up when they are dollar store grease paints. Oh well, everyone walked away happy with their transformer, vampire, zombie, and kitty cat faces. In the end it was a fantastic evening - even if I didn't get to leave my table until 15 minutes after Fall Fest ended. I was able to whisper a quick hello to the mister when he stopped by, but didn't have a break to say much more as I had a little one that just kept asking me to paint different colors on her face. She had no clue what was going on, other than the fact that people were getting their faces painted and she wanted in on the action.

Yesterday the mister and I took some time to soak up the sun and get a good hike in before our trails start to be covered by ice. He took me on some new trails and then we wrapped up the miles by coming back on an old standard. We saw tons of animal tracks and while we were hopeful to see some mountain lion tracks (there is a warning sign up that mountain lions have been seen on the trails this year), all that we got to see were those of giant rez dogs that were chasing after deer and some jack rabbit prints. The afternoon consisted of some grad school work before going out to try a new (and delicious) restaurant. When we got home we watched some Dr. Who (a new favorite for me) and I finished up a birthday present for one of my adorable nieces.

Today I've been back at the grind. I started out by getting a good workout in, but then had to go about my usual cleaning routine. After that, it was all grad school. However, I won't complain because I am now done with one of the three courses that I was taking this semester. With any luck I'll be done with the other two before Thanksgiving!

Hope you had a restful weekend and are ready for the week to come!