Here is our week so far...

In the last few days I have been asked some of those very pointed questions about teaching that I need to know the answer to, but that I cannot put into words. One of the questions that I was asked was, "How do I build relationships with children and parents?" I think those relationships are so important. I think I do develop them. But I could not answer the question of how. What I said was this: "we build relationship a lot on the porch after school when they can talk to me about whatever they want to." Some days on the porch the students are boisterous and loud and out of control. I took some pictures today.

This student told me she could do the splits and as soon as she said it, she did it. :)

These students are having a conversation with each other. I can't remember exactly what they were
talking about, but I remember there was a lot of banter. 

Here one of my student's is telling me who will pick her up after school and we started talking
about that and how excited she was.

Back to the question of building relationship with students.... some of it is showing them that I love them, giving a hug, a kind word, noticing new shoes, noticing pretty hair, noticing when students are having a bad day.  Students who feel "safe" in the classroom, feel cared about and the relationship blossoms. Students need to feel safe to make mistakes, safe to fail, safe to be whoever they are, and to take risks to test their knowledge.

I was absent yesterday, so I missed out what students learned about yesterday. The guest teacher had them do a writing assignment about the reading story. This week's story is called Bunny Day. It discusses time and what the bunny family does each day at a certain time. This story is also rich with rhyme. I loved reading this story today. Anyway.... Students and the guest teacher brainstormed things that the bunnies might do and then students wrote their sentences. The expectation is that students use proper grammar: Upper case letters when needed (such as the first word of the sentence), tall letters need to be tall (t, l, k, etc.), descending letters need to descend (y, p, g, etc.), finger spaces between words and sentences should make sense. Well, here are few of my faves. They run the entire spectrum. Some don't make sense, but they are favorites. Some have horrendous writing, but I love them for the progress it shows that students have made.

I love this one! 

I feel like the illustration needs more detail and color, but I think the picture and sentence are great! Keep up the good work!

This paper shows SO MUCH improvement. The letters are still not in the lines where they should be, but
I am so excited for this student because I can read what was written and the letters are well-formed. This is awesome.

"A bunny can lisine (listen) to muzic on a i pad."
I love it!

I love this paper! Had I been there, we would have talked about whether or not this could really happen and if the author (the student) wrote a story that could really happen or a story that was not realistic.

"A bunny can walking!" 

I love the illustration. I love the punctuation. I think that this student could have found a way to make the sentence make sense. But it is a sentence that has good capitalization, good spacing between words, and is very legible. And finally, Ms. Horn was not there to ask those questions... "Read it again, does it make sense? Is there a way to change it? Think about it...."

I can't believe that tomorrow is Wednesday already. It is half-way through our week. Can you believe it? I look forward to a weekend at home this weekend. I should start my planning for next week because I really need a weekend!