Happy New Year!

This year, I am very blessed to have MY OWN CLASSROOM FOR A WHOLE YEAR!!!!  It's a Grade 1 mat leave position, so it's temporary, but this is my third of year of teaching and the longest I've been in one class is 3 months, so I was thrilled to have this opportunity.  I was also very excited to teach Grade 1, as they are pretty cute and say "the darndest things."  I knew it would be a struggle because the kids are transitioning from half day kindergarten, and it's French Immersion, so on top of having to go to school full days, and start learning how to read and write and all that jazz, they also need to do EVERYTHING IN FRENCH.  Easy peezy lemon squeezy.  :P

Well, if it weren't for my super supportive boyfriend who keeps telling me I'm the best teacher ever and I can do it, I might have quit after the first week!  It is not easy switching from even slightly older grades to Grade 1, as by  Grade 3, the kids can communicate in French and understand how school works.  There's also the girl who cries for no reason, the boy who is clearly used to getting his own way, the girl who goes to the washroom and doesn't come back for 15 mins, the kid who puked in the  hallway but didn't tell me until 20 mins later,  the kid that can't keep his hands to himself, and the boy who can't speak any quieter than shouting volume.  Also they get confused about when to wear outside shoes and when to wear inside shoes.

If I'm stressed out, imagine those poor Grade One kiddos... :(

Ok, I made it through that first week, and it's getting better.  I needed to lower my expectations.  As in, it's ok if it takes half an hour to write down 4 words...

I didn't want to start off the year by having kids think that they would just be playing all the time, so it's been a lot of focus on work, respect, following rules... it's really challenging.  We have movement breaks and play games, and I want them participating, but they need to learn when to put up their hand, to not talk while others are talking, etc.  Today though, I was starting to be concerned that kids will start not liking school.  I have therefore decided that my focus for next week will be to make sure that kids like at least one thing about school, and to focus more on fun.  I want them to look forward to coming to school.  Next week will be more about play.  :)

Ok, now to remember what I like most:  the crazy things kids say.

Last week we had Aussie X (an Australian in-school sports program) come teach us "footy."  A girl from my class said that she told her parents about footy, and she said that they had never heard of it.  She then elaborated by saying, "My dad's never heard of footy because he's from Saskatchewan."  OMG sooo funny.

Another day we were practicing colouring lightly and one boy said that he can't colour lightly.  I said that he just needs to colour slowly, then he will be able to do it.  He replied that he can't colour slowly because he is "made to go fast."  lol

I probably won't be able to sleep tonight because I have school on the brain, hope this blog post shook some of it out!

Floating

Bonjour,

Tuesday was my first day back at work after the holidays, and I have been floating around my school since I've finished my temp contract and I'm still waiting for them to get me back on the sub list, so I thought I'd reflect on how that's going...

Primarily, I have been working with students from grade 4-6 who struggle with reading and/or writing. Some of them have diagnosed LDs, others don't.  I have been working with them to get them using Dragon Dictate dictation software so that they can get their ideas out and to help them with their spelling and grammar.  I also set up a Dragon Dictate profile for a visually impaired student.  As well, I have been teaching them to use Read & Write Gold to help students who struggle with reading- the program reads PDF documents, Word docs, and web pages.  Additionally, it is useful as editing software, as there is a "predict" tool that shows suggestions of possible words that students may be trying to type.  I had mixed feelings about having students dictate rather than physically write or type, as I feel these are valuable skills, however, printing and word processing are skills that they have been practicing since kindergarten, and there are some students who can really benefit from these programs.  I would not recommend that students begin using these tools before Grade 4 unless they have been diagnosed with a learning disability, as they are still learning printing and the sounds that words make, and if they are struggling with their writing/reading, it is possible that they could benefit from additional practice and/or tutoring.

When I wasn't busy training students to use assistive technology, I helped out with reading in Div I.  I think that teaching Grade 1 French Immersion is probably the most challenging grade to teach, especially at the beginning of the year.  If I were to teach Grade 1 FI, I would need A LOT of help lol.

I also worked with a Grade 3 student to practice saying the name of numbers in French.  (Ex: 40: quarante).  By grade 3, the students should have mastered recognizing and reading numbers 0-100.    I checked to see if he knew what the numbers were in English, and that was all good, and I told him, "No problems there," and he replied, "That's because I was born in English." *giggle*  He also had some riddles for me: Q: "What do you call a man with a rubber toe?" A: "Rrroberto!" (He rolled the "R" at the beginning).  I didn't really have a plan of what to do so I grabbed some tiles with numbers from 0-100 and a list of the numbers with the written form next to the word.  I put the tiles face down and said we'd take turns flipping tiles and the first person to read the number would win the tile.  Of course that would not be fair to him so I gave him 10 seconds before I read the tile.  He actually did really well, and when it was time for him to go back to class he told me (without being prompted) that he thought that was a really fun game. :D

The biggest realization that I've had this week is that I enjoy Div I more than Div II.  The younger kids are just so funny.

That's all for now folks!

Salle 8

Friday was the last day of a 3-month temp contract in a Grade 3 classroom (salle 8), so I thought I should record some of my memories....

This was the first time that I started off the year with "my own" class.  Last year, I took contracts mid-year so I didn't need to establish new routines for the most part.  I would highly suggest the book "The First Days of School" as a resource for establishing classroom expectations etc.  I wish that I had been able to take a look at it BEFORE school started though... oh well.  My first days before the kids arrived did not go exactly as planned, as the night before my first day, a window was smashed in my classroom and computers were stolen, so I was down a day for set-up time, as my classroom was a crime scene and I needed to wait for the police to check things over before I was allowed in... oh my goodness what a nightmare!  

Anyhow, I set up the classroom as best I could considering my time constraints and the fact that I had not had any say in the order process for classroom materials as I wasn't there the previous year.  Fortunately, the teacher that I was replacing had a great deal of resources in terms of posters, art supplies, and books.  I did a bit of scrounging in the basement to find some more storage for in the classroom, so I was lucky to not have to spend any money.  

The first day of school I was very nervous, but the kids were great and I enjoyed the "honeymoon phase" where the kids are really quiet and super respectful.  There were so good that I decided I didn't even need a behaviour program!  A few weeks in, the kids were more at ease and started to see more problems, so I implemented a behaviour program that involved communicating with the parents.  As the weeks went on, I started to feel behind in everything and more stressed than I had the year before, but a large part of this was due to the fact that this year I was more aware of  what I needed to do!  Looking back, I really didn't know what I was doing for the first bit, nor did I have a great deal of support or feedback in the first job I took.

The class (and the school) was great--  I really had a wonderful bunch of kids!  So here comes the point of this post-  to share some of the stories from the past couple of months.  All names will be changed, of course.

Jessica was a cute girl with a sense of humour who loved to chat and asked me on a nearly daily basis, "Mme... est-ce que tu peux m'acheter de la crème glacé?"  

And then there was Greg, who explained to me, in French, how the Northern Lights work.  I wish him all the best in the future in the scientific field of his choice- what a smart kid!

Andy was another one of the smart ones, but my, did he love to chat.  He shared his sketchbook with the class-- what a lot of talent he has.  I wonder if his dedication to drawing and writing stories has anything to due with the fact that he's not allowed online at home during the week?

Carin was a talented writer... she constantly asked me for vocabulary in French that I had to look up in the dictionary!

Brock liked to bounce around... a bright kid but sometimes had a hard time focusing.  My favourite thing about him was how he couldn't keep in his excitement when he found something interesting, like when he said "RAZ kids (online reading tool) is the BOMB!"  or when he made a tower for the construction unit in science, and instead of just taking the tower apart, he "imploded" it with "dynamite", like in the movie we had just watched in class.

Thank goodness for Jill, who is much better at remembering things than I am... she'll go far in life!

Another one of my favourite things was the time we used plastic tokens for Bingo that were held in old film containers.  I had a feeling they didn't know what they were, so I asked if anyone knew what the containers were from.  No one knew, so I explained that cameras used to use film, and one student said, "I'd like to see how that works."  My favourite thing about teaching kids is how everything is new to them. :)

There are many more stories I could add, but I'll stop here for now, as I think it might be long enough. :D

Keeping things in perspective

Today, because I'm feeling so overwhelmed, I thought it would be a good idea to write down some of the things that make me remember why I like teaching:

Sept 2012

After demonstrating my talent of doing double unders for “Étoile de la semaine,” I was skipping outside with some of the girls from my class, and one of them said, “Mme, when you retire, you should teach skipping.” Made me snicker, as I teach rec skipping classes in the evening.  Who knows, maybe I’ll still teach skipping when I’m 65.

Oct 15, 2012

Upon having a discussion about prepositions and countries - ex le Pérou --> au Pérou, la Tunisie --> en Tunisie, I pointed out that it is easy to remember that we should say “au Canada,” because it is like the anthem where we say “O Canada.”  This caused some students to burst into song, and we sang O Canada from beginning to end in French and then in English.  It was kind of awesome. Lol.

Oct 16, 2012

I love it when students randomly come tell me stuff.  Today I had a girl who came to me  and said, “I have two things to say:  One, it’s my brother’s birthday today.  Also, can I go to the washroom?” I see the obvious logic in the connection between these two topics. :)

Also, today I finally started feeling like I might be starting to understand assessments- I had been finding some good examples of rubrics on Pinterest and in a couple of other places, and was dreading translating them into French.  As it turns out, I had already collected a file folder full of rubrics in French!  Also, I think it’ll help to have them think of themselves as the teacher.  A student came to me to hand in his work after I’d asked him to go back and fix a couple of things already.  He asked, “Am I done now?” so I asked him “If you were the teacher, would you accept this work?”  He looked at it and said, “No,” then went back to his desk to start over. :)

Welcome!

Bonjour!  Bienvenue à mon blog!  I'd like to share some of the lessons, activities, and classroom organization ideas that I've been using in my classroom.  To kick it off, I'll start with my "pupitre magique" that I've created as a space for students to work when they are feeling like they need to block out distractions.  I'm going to be honest, I'm very proud of this project.  In fact, it's what inspired me to finally start this blog!