The Perils of Pop Culture

Yesterday, we were discussing celebrations again, and I showed a picture of a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.  Then I spent about 4 minutes trying to convince 5 year olds that the large beagle balloon was properly known as "Snoopy", not "Snoop".

"But, but, it's Snoop... Dog, Mr. Graham!"

Christmas songs from a five year old

We were talking about the concept of celebrations today, and I was really pushing the central point that "the important thing about celebrations is that people come together".  There may be special foods, or songs or dances, special clothes or traditions, but the important thing etc, etc.  Yesterday, I used birthdays as an example of a celebration, and today I talked about Christmas.  When we got to the special songs portion of the lesson, I was asking for suggestions.  One student offered, "Jingle Bells!" and another knew "We Wish You A Merry Christmas!"

When I called on the third student, he screwed up his face and said thoughtfully, "Well, it's like, you know..." and started singing (to the tune of Happy Birthday) "Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas!"

Yes.  Love it.

What I look like to a kindergartner

I had one of my students working on a chartpack during writing time today, and she made this picture of me leading a class in line.  I think that the scale is just about right.

"Look what I made!"

During math time, a student came up to me from the Unifix cube station.  Students can practice measuring, or patterning, or just generally explore the materials.  He had a stack of 4 cubes, ordered like this: brown-white-black-brown.

"Look what I made, Mr. Graham!" he exclaimed.

"Oh?" I replied, noncommittally.  "What did you make?"

"A s'more!"

Ha!  Clearly.

Bathroom signals

In an effort to teach the students not to interrupt me when I'm working in small groups, I've taught them how to ask to go to the bathroom in sign language.  (It's also a good test of small motor skill, to see who can manipulate their hands successfully).

I was sitting at my kidney table, leading a reading group, and I did a quick survey of the room.  I was, erm, surprised to see one of my students sitting at his table, looking directly at me, with his middle finger extended towards the ceiling, palm towards me, sorta like this.

"Zachary?"  I said calmly.  "Whatcha doing?"

"I'm asking to go to the bathroom, Mr. Graham!" he replied earnestly.  "And I really gotta go!"

It's always best to ask before making assumptions.  I relearn that every day.

Strong hands

Shamelessly stealing good ideas from across the hall, I told my students that there are 2 reasons that they need to color their pictures in all the way.  Reason #1 is that it makes the picture more interesting (and really, it does).  Reason #2 is that it makes their hands stronger, to do all that hard work (and training their hands to hold those small crayons/pencils).  If their hands are sore, I tell them, it's only because their muscles are working and making their hands stronger.

So, this is more cute than anything else, but as I was passing by a table of working students, one of them looks up at me.  Rubbing his hands, he says enthusiastically, "Mr. Graham!  I can feel it!  My hands are getting stronger!"  And immediately his entire table clamors for attention, too.  "Me, too!"  "Right!"  "Mine too!"

I do like my job a whole bunch.

So, I have a sign outside of my door, featuring me both as a kindergartner and a grown up (HA!  I'm not a grown up...)  Here it is:

So, at the end of my day, one of my Vietnamese students looks quizzically up at the sign.
"Mr. Graham, was that you when you was in kindergarten?"
"Yes, it was!"
"Mr. Graham...."  (long pause)  "No offense, but you was kinda ugly as a kid."

Buh.  Ouch.
And who taught her "no offense"?  No wonder she tested out of ESL services...

Back in kindergarten!

Alright, so for the 2011-2012 school year, I have moved back to kindergarten! This is quite exciting for me - in no other grade level can you take students from nothing (literally, in some cases) to something. It's like an increase of INFINITY percent. Whoa.

Here's one story from the first couple weeks - more to hopefully follow soon.

The class is sitting on the rug, and we're doing some vocabulary work. One of the vocab words for is "puddles", since it shows up in our anchor text for this week. I asked the students to describe a picture of a little girl in boots about to jump into a puddle.

 One of them said, "Mr. Graham! She is wearing red boots!"

"Mr. Graham! She has a raincoat on!"

 Another (who speaks Spanish at home), says quietly, "Mr. Graham. She is going to wetting herself." 

Yup. It's going to be a GREAT year.

All About Dogs

This spring, we're working on "All About Books" - basically, subjects that kids are experts on without having to do research (research books are next month).

This student is an expert on dogs (or "bogs", as he put it).

Here is the detail web that he generated for his thinking. Please note that he will write about the dogs playing tag, and playing ball. He knows what dogs eat, and how to walk them. And then there's that fourth catagory...

[Take a moment and click the link above if you haven't yet.... what IS that fourth catagory? Scroll down for the answer]

































"So, Levi," I said. "What's that other one say?"

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Shtricks, Mr. Gwham. They do shtricks! Like jumping, and wolling [sic] over!"

YES.

B-I-S-H

Coming back from lunch, one of my students with a mild speech problem had something very urgent to tell me:

"Missr [sic] Gwham, Missr Gwahm! That kid (here he's pointing at a new student in my class) was saying bad words at lunch! He was saying the B word!"

At this point, I think I know what the B word is, but really? First graders?

"Yeah, B-I-S-H!"

While it is hilarious that "bish" is EXACTLY how this student would pronounce the aforementioned B word (yay for spelling practice!), what KILLED me was that one of my quiet little proper Vietnamese girls leaned over and told him firmly,

"Levi, it's spelled B-I-T-C-H"

That was a laugh-behind-the-upheld-paper moment.

2, 4, 6, 8!

Okay, not a story about my class, but funny nonetheless...

Two teachers at school each coach a basketball team, a fifth grade boys' team and a fifth grade girls' team. At the end of the season, the two teams were having a joint party and had a scrimmage as part of that. I was walking down the hall to head out the door, and I heard the tail end of the scrimmage wrapping up, and then the cheers:

"2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate?!? BOYS!"

followed by

"2, 4,6, 8, who do we appreciate?!? GIRLS!"

Just made me chuckle.

Excellent word choice

I was teaching a lesson on using words other than said, and I was demonstrating how choosing a different word can effect a story. I sternly remonstrated (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) a student for sitting impolitely, and the rest of the class suggested words like "yelled", "scolded", and "snapped".

One of the words on our previously-generated list was "admitted". On the spur of the moment, I grabbed a pencil and snapped it in half, so that I could have something to admit to. The students were shocked.

"Mr. Graham! Why did you do that to a perfectly good pencil?!?" Allyanne demanded.

"Oooh, excellent," I thought. "My class, what is Allyanne doing right now?" I said, expecting an answer like yelling, or shouting. "Isabella?"

She thought for a moment, then smiled up at me. "Overreacting?"

I had a severe case of the giggles at Allyanne's indignant expression, and Isabella's markedly innocent one. Awesome.

And if you can spell "cape"...

I was teaching a reading RTI group, and we were working on long A with a silent E at the end

So my banter went something like this: "Oh, cape! What are the sounds in cape? That's right, /c/ /A/ /p/. And if you can spell "cape", you can spell "tape"! And if you can spell "tape"...

(I'm scanning the alphabet chart at this point)

And then one of the girls pipes up (totally innocently, I think...?) - "You can spell RAPE!!!"

I ignored her completely, and just moved right along.

Post-Snow Day

I always have a little trepidation after snow days, because who knows how worked up the kids will be, or if they got any sleep, or where they spent the day if their parents had to work, etc, etc. Here's a couple of snippets from today:

-One student arrived late to reading group, settled into independent work, and started softly singing "Beat It" to himself, in a soft Vietnamese accent. "Just beat it, beat it"

-Another student came up to me and asked me if I thought she sounds more like a Dalek or a Cyberman. "Well, I don't know, Julia," I replied. "You don't really sound like either."

"How about now, Mr. Graham?" she grinned. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

"Don't worry, Ms. Louise!"

My parents were heading for Washington DC to see a sister of mine, so my mother came into the classroom to say goodbye. She was explaining to the class about where she was going, and fielding questions about her plans to meet up with President Obama. As she was getting ready to depart and waving goodbye, one of my girls piped up from the rug:

"Don't worry, Ms. Louise! We'll look after your son while you're gone!"

Cute, AND thoughtful.

I'm sorry, what?

We were having sharing time, and one student brought a mini-keyboard thing. She was explaining why it was important to her, and seemed to lose track of where she was:

"It's important to me because it can make this sound" she plays a key "and this sound" plays another key "and also because my grandmother gave it to me before..."

"Before?" I innocently prompt.

"Yeah, before. Before she went to hell." she finishes, totally seriously, perhaps not even noticing the language.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I chose to roll with that one, rather than try to explore that issue.

"I found almost everything, Mr. Graham...."

At the end of my reading group, I gave the kids a hidden picture sheet to work with. On the way out the door, (switching back to regular classes), David (primarily a Vietnamese speaker) turns to me and says, "I found almost everything, Mr. Graham, except the hooker."

"Sorry, say that again, David?"

"I found almost everything, except the hooker!"

In my head, I'm thinking, "but it's 11 AM... they're not out yet!"

At this point, he is gesturing at the page, which has a fishhook prominently un-crossed out.

Ahhhh, riiight. Gotcha.

High point of the day

We were discussing Martin Luther King, Jr, and reading the book "Martin's Big Words". It was very touching how absolutely shocked the kids were at the idea of people sitting in different parts of the bus based on the color of their skin. "Not fair!" "Wrong!" and "That's racism, Mr. Graham." Very touching.

Earlier in the day, we'd posed for a picture about skin color.

The other high point of the day was three students playing Uno during choosing time: at home, these three students speak Arabic, Vietnamese and Russian, but they can play a fierce game of Uno in English.

"That doesn't help me to get more cards. I have to get zero cards to win!"

Ducks versus Beavers

The Oregon Ducks are playing against Auburn for the BCS championship today, so the kids have been hearing a lot about this at home. As a result of that, every so often, there's a Ducks vs Beavers conversation that crops up during work time. Today's was particularly hilarious.

One student was busily working on her paper, but she popped her head up to comment on the issue:

"I like the Ducks, but I like the Beavers more because of Justin Bieber." (now I'm stuck on the idea of the OSU Biebers. The football helmets could have wigs!)

Correspondence from the front

A couple of notes I received today:

The first, from a first grader in my class this year:

The second, from a student who was a first grader in my K/1 blend last year:

Napoleon?

I was explaining the schedule for January to the kids today, and was talking about having a day off for MLK Day in the middle of January. I'm planning to talk more about MLK and why he is important later in the month, so I'm trying to scoot quickly along and get on to the rest of the day.

One of the kids pipes up with, "Is he important, like NAPOLEON?" and just giggles herself back into her seat. No idea where that came from, or why a 1st grader is even aware of the ostensibly-diminutive former Emperor of the French.