Wow, wow, WOW. Tomorrow is Friday! I am officially (as of 2:00pm today) done leading Rotations and I am officially a Reading-only teacher from here until the end! I can't believe that tomorrow is Day 60...of 70. Wow. Just wow.
Reading went really well today. Today was the last day in our "Animals" theme, so we talked about the different kinds of animals we know, how they're alike/different, etc. Aryn has this book on the largest and smallest and fastest and slowest animals (etc., etc.) in the world, and so we read that together. Nonfiction books for younger kids are so fun, because they are written in an awe-inspiring way. They include the most interesting facts and the language they use is for kids. When you get into older grades...this is gone. This was actually a big topic of discussion during the staff meeting this week because the school librarian and upper-elementary teachers are unsure of how to get kids reading nonfiction. I can't say I blame them -- nonfiction books can get really boring, especially if you're not particularly interested in the topic. I understand why teachers feel like it's so hard to get kids to read nonfiction. The interest has to be there and they're harder to comprehend. The love needs to be instilled in kindergarten...which is what Aryn is (and now I am) attempting to do here.
Another thing Aryn and I talked about today was writing. She went to a workshop last night and was told that in Common Core, kindergarteners are supposed to be writing paragraphs. Paragraphs! That is so crazy to me...Aryn and I get so excited when a child writes a full sentence because they are so proud of themselves and it is a real accomplishment for them. Aryn told me that after the workshop she felt kind of incompetent because all the other teachers were talking like their kids can totally write paragraphs and they commended her for her honesty about how our kids do a sentence, maybe two. So she made a change! This week instead of just leaving the journal prompts at "An animal I like is..." she added "and why" to the end. So the kids had to write at least two sentences! Next week she's planning to expand it further and make it a two-day project, so we can get 4 or 5 sentences about a single thought...boom, paragraph. It's new, and it will take tons of practice before they can do it on their own, but it's a start. She gave me a lot of great resources from the workshop last night (okay, she showed them to me and then I photocopied them...but she said I could!!) and I'm excited to use them one day. Writing is hard. It is SO hard.
One of the most interesting resources was a journal article about whether it's more important to push actual handwriting (pencil and paper...ball/stick, cursive, Denelian, whatever) or /"digital handwriting" (typing). There are pros to each. There are cons for both. There is just so much to teach these days, I can't even begin to know where to start! I read the whole article and it mostly focused on a balance of the two and a connection between them. This may sound crazy, but the fact that a lot of teachers are stressing out about how to fit Core into their curriculum and make it work is actually making me more excited about it. I know I can do this. I can make it go together. I am thankful that I am coming into teaching right at the introduction of these new standards, because I don't have to change something I've been doing for years...I can start off with it and work on improving it rather than trying to squeeze it into something I already know. We are lucky to get into teaching right now as the changes are occurring. The timing was just right for us, I guess.
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