school days

I think that the past three days have been the best days I've had teaching. That's a big deal! Never mind the fact that Monday I came home in tears. God's grace is sufficient, really.

I'm learning so much about relationships with children, behavior, discipline, structure, and age-appropriate activities. They are all so inter-connected, and yet sometimes I miss it altogether. When a child is having a behavior issue and I can't control it - so often it stems back to a lack of a good relationship between me and the child, a poorly-planned lesson that is unstructured and confusing, or an activity that is too difficult, resulting in a very de-motivated youngster. All of the parents and teachers who are reading this are nodding and saying, yes, of course... but this is really what I'm learning! It's fascinating to me even as I sit here and think about it. When I am organized, well-rested, and prepared... things do go better. When I show my students that they matter... things do go better. When I praise them and provide positive reinforcement, instead of saying "no, no, no" all the time... things do go better. When I recognize accomplishments and improvements, things do go better. When I take plenty of time to explain and model and re-explain and demonstrate again... things do go better.

So I'm learning, probably more than they are.

All of that said, here are a few snapshots from the week...

First Grade - I asked them to write "bike" - this is what she came up with. :) Technically, its perfect - they're learning to sound out words in Spanish and they're doing great. I have noticed a huge improvement in their reading and writing, even in English, and I know its due to the wonderful literacy instruction they're getting in Spanish. Unfortunately, the English alphabet is a little bit different, so when she sounded it out it didn't look quite like "bike"! I'm trying not to think about the fact that "bike" is a sight word that they shouldn't even need to sound out, and just focus on the fact that the way she spelled it is really cute. 

Second Grade - we're learning "can" and "can't", so today I did an activity with them where they pulled words out of envelopes to form sentences, wrote them down in their notebooks, and labeled them true or false. They did great. I'm learning that they love to work with their hands!

Third Grade - learned some clothing items this week, so of course we had to dress up. You gotta love the jeans - my third grade boys don't wear quite the same size as my husband. :) 

Fourth Grade - Twister wasn't exactly in the plans for today, but I am working on "left" and "right" (as prepositional phrases, such as "to the left", along with other prepositions) with them, and they were begging to play, so we had an impromptu game at the end of class. 

Some other encouraging activities this week (as in, I was encouraged because they worked), were forming vocabulary words with pipe cleaners, practicing clothing vocabulary with paper dolls, and playing a modified version of Bingo to practice speaking and the grammar concepts we are learning. So I'm off for the weekend on a high note. Of course, Monday might be another story. But until then, I'll remain optimistic that we're learning... all of us. :)