The stories to get me through...

These stories are for the days (that we all have) that are not full of so much smiling, laughter, and childlike joy:

Story 1: My class enters the hallway from the cafeteria heading towards academic arts.  I realize that one of my more confident students was observing his reflection while showing varying emotions.  Out of the corner of my eye I noted he had a Spongebob type expression (wide eyed and mouth open) while snapping and pointing his fingers once at his reflection.  I approached him and said, "What are you doing, sir?"  I fully expected him to take his place in line and begin following our hallway procedures, but I should have considered his personality.  His response was, "Miss Thomas, I was tellin' myself I am lookin' gooooood!"  At this moment, I took my place and try to keep myself composed until passing my class to the next teacher.

Story 2: About mid-morning I look out into my wonderful class to see that all of them are steadily working on their writing.  I could not help but think, "How did I end up with a class of first graders who love writing SO much?"  Then, I spotted him... whistling and piloting his brand new paper air plane (engineered from his writing paper of course).  I called him over to my table to discuss work-on-writing procedures.  I said, "During this time we are working on our writing by getting our ideas on paper through pictures and words... here is a new piece of paper for you to get started."  He sat next to me at our conference table and told me that he did not know what to write about.  I instructed him to look around the room for ideas.  He looked around the room for what seemed like eternity or... 2 seconds, and spotted the container of jellybeans.  He said, "I don't know how to spell that word".  I reminded him of our work-on-writing procedures, and that he was to underline it if he was unsure how to spell it.  I then overheard him sounding it out... "Jo-ey-beans".  Looks like that will be a new nickname for the remainder of the year.

Story 3: Our class had just endured the entire Everyday Mathematics block, and was heading into Science.  I turned on what we call a wiggle song, and the children did the usual and jumped up to dance and sing to the song.  Suddenly, I got a whiff of something that belonged... well, not in the classroom.  I asked the student closest to me if they needed to use the restroom (thinking that they just had gas).  The response was, "Nope! I don't have to go... I just did!"

Prologue: I have a child in my classroom whose entrance to a room cannot go unnoticed.  Story 4:  We were mid-lesson this afternoon learning about the properties of water.  The children were very into the experiment of water taking the shape of the container it is poured into.  This highly entertaining child enters the classroom from using the restroom and (without a breath) shouts, "Miss Thomas, I had to poop and I couldn't but then I did and then I couldn't get it off and I thought I was going to have a heart attack but then I got it off."  (Side note: Your facial expression right now times 21... mmhm) 

Story 5: One of my children trips over their shoe laces, forgets to tuck in his shirt, and bumps into the person in front of him in line ALL on the way to recess. When he makes it out on the playground he approaches me and says that he has bad karma, and explains the situation.  When I explained to him what karma was... we agreed that what he actually had was bad luck.  At the end of recess he approached me and said, "Actually, Miss Thomas... I do have karma... I knocked over my neighbors folder this morning."  I LOVE the little teachable moments!

Week 2 and 3

Okay, so week 2 and 3 have officially passed.  What does that leave... 33 more? I am SO just kidding.  I absolutely love the children that I have the opportunity to work with this year.  We have practiced wanted behaviors for Read-to-Self, Read-to-Someone, and Work-on-Writing.  The children are doing a fabulous job with the expectations of each of these.  This week I introduced Read-to-Someone on Tuesday (the day after a long holiday weekend).  It was a struggle for my children to come up with the ideas of wanted behaviors, but when practicing they did it with ease.  By the end of the week I was able to have them try a half-and-half split.  Half of the students were doing read-to-someone while the other half were doing read-to-self.  When half of the allotted time for reader's workshop had passed I clapped twice and they switched.  Next week, I will be introducing Word Work and Listen-to-Reading.  Once these have been introduced the schedule will finally be on track to normalcy.  My goal for the upcoming weeks is to have 3 types of assessment per lesson that I teach, and use the results to drive my instruction.  I am going to keep it short, because it has been a LONG short week (as we had a school holiday on Monday).  See y'all in a week!