April 10, 2013

I’m not sure what second graders talk about in the U.S. but today during art class the conversation I was listening in on was about the different countries my students were born in.  This lead to a discussion in which one second grader was explaining to the other that the U.S. and the U.K. are not the same place.  This is just one of the joys of working at a school with so much diversity!

The weeks have really been flying by, although sometimes days seem to take forever.  I have been staying very busy trying to figure out how to stay on top of all my kids in four different grades.  Every day, I am sure that I learn more than my kids.  Some days go really well!  My lessons flow well and they make sense.  The kids are engaged and they really seem to be getting it.  However, other days I really struggle just to get through with my sanity intact.  The lessons just do not go the way I planned.  The kids are not getting it.  The Internet is down (again) and so I am not able to show the video I planned to show.  My kids are all excited about something and so it is difficult to get them to focus.

In second grade right now we are working on writing descriptions.  Last week, I brought in some apples.  We made charts talking about what we saw, felt, smelled, felt, and tasted as we cut up the apples and ate them.  While we were doing this, the comment from one of my second graders was that I am a very strange teacher, but that they liked it.  After we were finished, the kids took their charts and wrote a paragraph description of their apple. 

This week for science we are talking about fossils.  So I made some clay and brought it with me to class. We took some leaves and pressed them into the clay making our own “fossils” and then talked about how fossils are made.  Later, one of the kids came up to me and told me that she was going to bury her plant.  I was a little confused what she was talking about at first.  It took a minute for the light bulb to turn on.  I asked if she was trying to make a fossil and she said yes.

At one point today one of my girls was reading in the loft.  She comes down and starts pointing to a word in the book that she was reading.  By the time I was able to get her to hold the book still so that I could read the word we were both laughing. She was excited because it was a word that she has found in the dictionary that morning as part of her vocabulary.  I think that one of the most exciting things about teaching is seeing my kids take the things that they are learning and apply them to their lives.

One last story.  As I am sitting here writing this there are four of my students outside playing in the playhouse.  I keep hearing my name as they are out their and so I go out to see what is going on.  They are playing that they are school teachers.  One of the girls is Melissa and the other is Katie (the other elementary teacher here).  The other girls are their students.