September - November Literacy Events

I feel like I've been on a long vacation.  I seem so out of the loop it is hard to get back in.  Interviews took much time and energy and spirit from me this year.  I am battling disease as so many of the children are, so to make it through an actual 5 days of teaching seems like it should be celebrated as a miracle event!  It is hard to keep something congruent going because so many children are in and out of the classroom as well.      

I have been busy working with children in small groups on letters and sounds and words and reading stories.  We have also done Reader's Theater. We have done Spin Spider Spin and Slow Sloth's Slow Song.  This was an accomplishment but took time from other things.  The children went to the zoo for a field trip.  Our new letters have revolved around that.  OOO the wind sound lead to boo and then to zoo.  That was quite easy.  Our sentence now reads.  We are going to the zoo.  They use this one to get the words to, the, go and we right now.  Zoo everyone seems to know.  We added D and N and then expanded to mom and dad.  This will come in handy for letters and cards and things, which they are already discovering and using.  The children are more apt to write now.  I still only get one or two letters from most but during shared writing sessions we are doing most of the words.  We did a lesson on zoo animals as the children were going to draw the animal they liked best at the zoo and then tell me about their trip.  The pictures were done on expensive water color paper using first permanent black marker.  Then they added crayon to some parts and then water colors to the other parts. They could mix up colors they needed as well.  The pictures are great. The children continue to work and add animals to the habitats.  They will be given a sheet for an animal report to be completed at home.  It is a simple
paper.  My animal is ____________________ My animal lives in a _____________________habitat.
Two things I know about this habitat_____________________. My animal eats____________________
My animal's enemies are_________________________My animal is/is not endangered, why?/ why not? 
Here are two interesting things about my animal.   Add a picture of your animal in their habitat.
These reports will be shared and then added to the habitats with their pictures. 

Meanwhile we begin on our making a light, light which will go with our Santa's Workshop table.  Here children will use manipulatives, duplo, Mecca and capasela to create moving and other toys and objects.  They will have many opportunities to make machines that work and toys etc.  I call it the construction zone.  I would now like to finally get my woodworking table going as well.  All this will require the drawing and explanations of what they make.  The circuit will be drawn and their theories of how the light, lights recorded. I do this first because then the children have no trouble attaching batteries to the motors and getting the capasela to work.  They can use this center independently once they get the basic circuit. I
consider this literacy because of their how to drawings and theories and because they have to follow pictures and directions to build the objects.
    I have introduced many animal books from The Name of The Tree, Greedy Zebra, to songs 1,1,1, Monkeys, Elephants Have Wrinkles (April and Susan), Noah's Ark, Octopus song- Charlotte Diamond. This song is my food chain song.  We have done a lot of food chains.  We created a lion, food chain
etc. They love the Octopus song paired with What Did I Eat?  This is an ongoing deal and the children are quite good at drawing food chains now.   

We finally got two poems to performance level.  Shapes and Countings Easy.  We walked from classroom to classroom stopping at those with sisters, brothers, or cousins, and we performed the two poems. We acted out our shape poem.   We did one for the office as well.  They had fun doing this.  It always surprises me how they keep going on to do more.  

November 16

We began today with a quick going over of letters, sounds and poems.  I passed out lower case magnetic letters to the children and then I asked for words from them and they had to come up and construct them. I did tell them to put the letters on the floor in front of them, to make sure they knew the letters, or ask a friend for help, and to keep their hands in their laps so that walking feet wouldn't step on them.   I gave them no help when they had to construct the word, they had to work together.  I  stop,  a,   hi mom, me,  we see the zoo, boo, ow  They did very well with this. 
     Centers followed.  There were several must do items.  One the pictures of the spiders had to be colored.  I mention this because these drawings really do show what the children now know about spiders, and in a sense are their written stories about spiders.  These pictures will go up with all the spider notes and information with an explanation to the parents on what they are seeing. The same applies to their scarecrow pictures and stories, in this case I told them we were making a memory for their scrapbooks because they obviously can't put their scarecrows in it.  

I put out the leap frog letter/phonics mat and that has generated much interest.  The alphabet  talking case is out at the other school which can be picked up at Toys R Us is a good one too.  They have been playing the find the letter a,  find the letter q, etc.  during center time.  Playing teacher continues and I will soon have enough poems around the room to play read around the room.  At the end of center time, I told the children to get very comfortable even if they wanted to lie down because I was going to read them The Elephant's Child  by Kipling.  I told them to really listen to this story as the language in it is really beautiful.  They do love this story but it took me a lot of practice to read it well, no stumbles allowed, when the equinoxes had preceded according to precedent, and the great gray, green greasy Limpopo River all set about with Fever trees, the bi-colored python rock snake with the scalesome, flalesome tail etc.  This book needs to be practiced a lot at first and least by me.

November 14

Today I begin with a purpose to get to writer's workshop quickly and still fail a bit.  We reviewed letters, poems, counting numbers, counting on, and greater than,  we practiced 5 is greater than 3 with cards.  I wanted to train the vocabulary.  Then we share drew our third attempt at a spider.  I simply went through each part and asked a volunteer to come up and add that part.  Then they wrote my spider and did a drawing of their own.  We met when they were done and I went through the parts to see if any one needed to change or add something.  How many legs?  Where do you put them, does your spider show this.  I told them that this picture was to show what we now knew about spiders.  So their pictures included pedipalps, fangs, 6 spinnerets, 6 or 8 eyes, 8 legs coming from the cephalothorax etc.   They really are wonderful.  I had them do them in black felt pens and then they will add pencil crayon colors and habitats to them tomorrow.  Our first colored picture.

I read a book on scarecrows as we are doing this in the morning class and a short blurb on fangs in the Pm class.  I have not read much lately.  We are finishing stories and things and my group times have reduced themselves. Instead we sang one, one, one and did hopscotch.  We needed to move around. I got my second w word  wave from my student today.  More writing and cards are being made.  The children had to draw their scarecrows and tell me their stories.  I also got the rest of the spider stories.  They found boo in a book today and knew they could read it.  Zoo was spelled correctly and we
had quite the discussion on to, too, zoo, and boo comparing to to go, no, in the Pm class.  Also my scholastic high frequency readers came in.  Not much to look at on the outside but my kids can read them.   I see are the first words.   I can , the, are words they can get.  They were mispriced so I bought them at a good price and I will now send these home and use them for reading groups, before I put cards in them.  I think they will be pleased to see they can read the new books. Terry  PS.  It is amazing how easily the children talk about the pedipalps of the spider. 

November 13

I am madly trying to get ready for our Celebration of Learning and interviews.  This is a very hard time.  I think I need a secretary or I need to shut my room down.  I do not seem to be able to do both and still sleep.    

I begin with the letter z today for zoo, rhymes with boo and we are going to the zoo.  I am busy finishing up projects, and trying to get up the documentation.  I did a morning message today, that the children could find words in.  We, hi, to, the, were some of them.  I am seeing the playing of teacher more now and writing going up onto the white board.  I worked with two small groups today with sock and chalk as we did numbers from 0 to 7. We practiced these.  Also my second group did some letters then I had them write words from the sounds I would say.  We, see,  boo, zoo, etc.  Also today one student came in with another W word, winner which she shared with us today.    We read a factual book on spiders - their pedipalps and fangs, and we talked about how we would now draw a spider to prepare the children for tomorrow's writer's workshop.  A spider was found in our room today.  It was not he typical black spider but a baby garden spider.  It had more details on it which we studied.  She was falling off the paper but catching
herself by her web and then crawling back up the line.  It was neat to watch.  Only one child is still afraid of them.  I collected spider stories, finished off the scarecrows, getting them dressed in one class and started taking photographs of them with the children.  The children then drew a two dimensional representation of their scarecrow.  These will go up with their stories.  I want so much to get the time and space to put all this material up.  

Centers ran long today because of the stories and we just reviewed some poems, and that was it.  The children were playing with the number and letter games more today as well, and the computer is always going with the children on numbers and letters. 

November 10    

 I did some small group work today in both classes.  We talked about W and We and the morning message was Hi class, we have new beads to use.  The children helped me read and write it. We had a discussion about the comma, being like the yield sign at Safety City and we practiced reading it with
just the slow down get your breath and go on voice.  Also I made a big deal out of the period and the spaces.  I noticed today that the children are starting to say period first now and then the stop sign,  whereas before they did the reverse.   I hate the sentence for the sentence value but we got a terrific bag full of beautiful beads to add to our marvelous junk drawers in our art studio.  They began to use them on their scarecrows to embellish them.  That is our new word.  The 3 groups I did in each class took much
time so our group times were affected somewhat.  I do not mind because the children are learning to work with each other, share their ideas and solve problems. Later they have to tell me about their explanations.  So today for peek at the week instead of drawing on that sheet the children again drew their results from yesterday's sink and float.  I got much more detailed pictures today, on this revisit.  Then I asked them for their explanations. I am going to include some here.

M:  The key is in the boat.  It floats because there is a boat there.  It floats in the big boat because it doesn't have more weight.

T:  The key is in the boat.  It can float because the water pushes the boat up and it floats.  The green boat is too small the key is made out of metal so it sunk.   The key could float in the container because there is air in there.

M:  The key in the boat floats.  It floats because the boats float.  It didn't float in the small boat because it was too little. 

D.  The key in the boat floats because it has its balance.  It sunk in the little green boat because the boat was too little, the key was too big and it was made out of metal.  It could float in the bigger boat.

B.  The key is in the boat.  The key is so light so it floats.  It's too heavy in the little boat so it sank.
 
D.J.  The key floats in the container because of the air.  The key floats in the boat because the boat was bigger than the key.  The key is floating on the outside of the container because of the elastic band.

A.  The boat was the big boat.  So it was strong enough to hold the key. The container had air in it so the key could float.  

So the ideas of size,  weight and air being a factor in an object sinking or floating  are surfacing.  We will meet with these ideas to talk about them, disagree and come up with our theories about sink and float.    I love these group times, I find they have to think and search for words to really explain something.  I know when I did this with the spider webs they did not always have the language, and had to say things like the spider goes from here to here, or from this to this.  They had a really hard time explaining the making of the spokes too.  It was good to see them try to come up with some way of representing their ideas.  Recordings today were strictly in drawing form and I scribed what they were saying.  It will be put up with
their writing from yesterday.  We went overtime and had a birthday celebration and hopscotch and a little read about bird eating spiders, especially the one called the Goliath spider.  

November 9

I did not make an entry on Thursday because the three teachers at my one school, English, French  emersion, and Logos got together to put on an information evening for the parents.  It was entitled What Literacy Looks Like in the Kindergarten Classroom and How you can help your child learn early literacy skills.  We each presented.  One on books and language, one  on reading behaviors, one on writing.  We began with the parents  working on some jigsaw puzzles.  We emphasized here the active nature of learning that we were after.  Later the analogy of how children do not learn language in a sequence but they put a little sky together and then a little boat, and then a little tiger etc. like they made the jigsaw puzzle, until it all comes together into a supportive, self-extending, interactive, and connected whole.  Connections are made and reciprocity exists so that the little they  learn in writing helps the little they know in reading etc.  Connections, approximations, loaning skills, modelling, interactive, shared, independent
reading and writing, phonic s kills, phonemic awareness were all discussed and explained.  We demonstrated what we are doing to further literacy skills.  We modeled what we wanted them to know.  It went well although it was not well attended.  Handouts were given. I write this here because in a  partnership it is important that our parents understand what we are trying to do so that they to can help, encourage, and 'see' the learning.  This too is part of our literacy day in kindergarten.  

  November 9

 My basic schedule for the classroom goes something like this   Morning group time:  a usually fast paced 10 to 15 minutes in which we go over the helpers by figuring out their names and reading the see_________, hi___________.  We go over letter names, and the phonic portion of the sounds connected with the letters, sometimes through the modeling of the morning message, or sing our rhymes, and chants.  This lesson has a phonemic awareness component as well, especially on writer's workshop days.  This is when we play with the sounds in the words, without the letter association. Here I am sounding out words and they guess what it is.  Or I ask them to listen to 3 words and tell me which one does not rhyme.  Or I ask them to say a letter name they think a word that I give them starts with.  They also
do an interactive writing session helping me as I model the writing of an important message.  On Mondays I give them a new word, and letter or number or whatever.  We also do sight words, and I am directly teaching some of these skills and drilling them but in the context of the words that form sentences on our literacy board that are important to us.  We also use the words from our poem.  Sometimes like today, I will have a child come up and use the pointer stick to underline the print in a poem that we are reading.
It is a structured time to some degree but a flexible time.  We can go with an interest and will sometimes stay on the rug for a full 30 minutes depending on what is going on.  Before this the children have come in and exchanged their books for their book bag and read some others before taking their chosen book home. 

Table centers follow on Mon, Wed., and writing occurs on Tues. Thurs. and Friday with Peek at the week.  I also try to have some small group discussion built in through the week.  For the last three weeks we have been exploring sink and float.    The children have explored this idea at the water table first with a variety of objects.  Then we tested some out when I wrote on the plastic board that goes into our water table Yes and No  sink and Float.  They sorted the objects.  In a small group of 5 children, they chose 3 objects from the pile and drew or traced them onto my sink and float sheet.  They then predicted whether or not the object would sink or float. Then they tested them out.  F was written for float and S for sink.  They met again to discuss any surprises and why they thought these object float, while these others sink.  This was all recorded.

Next, the children heard the story Who Sank The Boat?  Again in their groups of 5, they went to the water table which now had a variety of boats of all sizes.  Each child got a boat and some frogs and pigs (small ones) and they had to record and find out how many frogs and pigs it took to sink each boat.  Again this was recorded by the children in number form with the word.       Today in their groups of 5 the children had to problem solve.  I put a key on the rug and asked them to tell me about the key.  Then I went back to
two things that were mentioned I told them we are going to talk about.  One that the key was metal and the other that the key does in fact sink.  We tested this out if anyone was not sure of this.  I then told them to make the key float.  They were in shock for about 15 seconds and then they began to work on the problem.  Can we use something ?  I assured them they could. So they went to the water table to solve the problem.  They found the key sunk some boats, but floated in others. I asked them why this happened and
recorded their conversations.  They found the key  will float in the funnel and open cylinders for awhile etc.  Next, I gave them an open pill bottle and a lid  and told them to make the key float again.  This they did. The third task was to use the pill bottle again but this time they could not put the key inside it.  I also laid an elastic band on the rug.  The children share wrote ' I made a key float' using phonetic spelling.  Then they drew the ways they made the boats float.  These were labeled stamped and that was writer's workshop for today.  Tomorrow I will have them draw these pictures again and put them with their originals.  

Meanwhile the children were into many different centers.  Playing teacher and writing on the white board is a popular activity now.  They were writing their sight or key words like see, hi, stop, I, A, all spelled correctly.  Also the children were studying charts on the different habitats that were brought in.  The habitat committee was busily reproducing a waterfall, pond, trees, moss covered rocks they saw in the picture to our bulletin board.  Here we are answering the question Do spiders live here?  4 different habitats are going up.  Desert, arctic, rainforest, grassland/pond area.  We are adding junk and materials in three dimensions as we talk about and plan the habitat before we find out what animals live there.  We can add
much on the desert from our talk.   We clean-up usually after an hour or more has elapsed.  Then we spend time around 15 or so minutes on a variety of ending activities.  Sometimes we act out their stories like the spider web ones which we have been doing for the last few days.  We have been working on a song and poem about numbers as well.  Then we share some stories.  We did Noah's Arc, and we read over our notes on spiders and changed some of our first thoughts.  I read a counting book 1 Hunter to them
again, today.    

November 9     

A child said I was a very good teacher.  He stood there in all of his 5 years of experience and very seriously told me that I was a very good teacher. How he came to this truth I do not know, but he spoke it with his whole body.   He did not tell me once but three times because he wanted me to realize how very important it was that I understood exactly what he was telling me.  This was serious business and it was not to be taken lightly. He has, in all his innocence, given me a monumental task.  For each and every afternoon as he enters the room, his eyes tell me of the trust he has given me.  They speak too of the expectation that I will not let him down or disappoint him, because we  both now know I am a very good teacher.  He gave me a gift that I should prize above all the credibility I sometimes think is so important.    In this way he encourages me each day, and this has made all the difference.  

November 7

I am noticing in the AM that the children are not focused or really into much at all.  We had some interest in spiders and rocks but it was interrupted by a number of things and I am having a hard time getting back
to that.  I am also noticing that they are eating a lot of sugar.  They are bringing candy treats to school.  I am going to prevent this for awhile as I do not think they need more sugar.   I began with a review of poems, sounds, letters, etc.  and we had photographs of the children dressed in their Halloween costumes to look at. I thought they may like to design frames around them to give to their parents.  We drew spiders and wrote messages for writer's workshop today. We also read through our old ideas of what we thought about spiders and changed some things. The PM children drew Anansi or spider pictures instead.

 We had plastic spiders to look at and we discussed where things would go. I am beginning to see two body parts and the legs coming out of the first part not the second.   The children heard a story about the black widow spider at their request. Centers followed.  Clay letters were made this time spelling the child's
name and words they knew.  Snowmen are being made as well.  We went over B, W, ow, and 6 too.  I have added the sight words to the listening area because it has a white board there too, and I have put them into their pocket chart.  We ended with the acting out of our spider stories and Biscuits in the Oven.   I want to be able to get their spider and scarecrow stories soon.  

November 6

I am beginning to feel a real difference between my two classes.  When it comes to getting things done and visiting the children more, I can do more in the PM.  These children really get along now and I do not have to stop for talking chairs, or squabbling over toys that I am still having to do in the morning.  I will look into this as well. 

My good intentions of a short lead time, fell short today in both classes.  I had to demonstrate how to use the coffee filters to play with the mouse paints.  I wanted them to talk about what it is that they are seeing.  So from our story Mouse Paints the children will discover the secondary colors.  I also read two books from scholastic.  One called spider names, is one the children can read.  I just got in their factual emergent
readers.  They are great, and I just ordered them with my regular book order.  I told them a little of what was happening around them and showed them a new math game after I demonstrated the number six and the letter W for we.   Today I had one of the children come up and underline the print using a pointer as I have modeled for the others.  We read spin, spider,  spin and then we looked for a w word, web.  The children found the word and then framed it with their hands.  We talked about the space that was found
before and after the word as well.   Then I let them go to centers. I went to a workshop on the supporting muscle growth in children including gross and fine motor skills.  They recommend stools for the children to sit on rather than the floor.   During centers in the PM I went with my camera to capture the stories.  Much literacy was happening.  Some children were playing school and writing letters.  I was too busy in the AM just trying to get my new student settled in.  I just managed to set up mouse paints and play, teach the new math game.  

Here are some of the PM's stories.  The boys had set up a police station.  This is a common building that we have in the block corner.   One of the boys had a little treasure map that he kept with his car.  He showed it to me and read where he would have to go to find the treasure. " I followed the arrows to find the gold."  Another girl was having the big tortoise step on the smaller lizards in the desert.  She had them all going ow, ow, ow.   I told her she could write that word by using one letter she already knew and our W from today.  I will share this with the others tomorrow if I remember.  About 6 children were drawing on the white board, that I use for messages. They were pretending to point with the stick.  We ended with Bibi and The Bull by Carol Vaage and we hop scotched to The Popcorn Song.

November 5

It is time for reflection on what is working well in the classroom and what it is that needs to be further developed, changed, dropped, or added. I will be looking at this process through the week as I begin to hand out book-bags on Monday.  I want to get some small group time for myself and the children. One literacy group and several discussion groups, that will help us go forward in our spider project. 

I have come to realize after watching the children in the last couple of years, that there are really 3 levels, that I have seen so far,  of letter learning that I need to 'teach' to.  I know when I ask a child to identify a letter, if they respond in any of these 3 ways Marie Clay will score them correct- by sound, by name, by object association- "that is the kite letter".     All children have their own way of  making sense of the
letters.  I want my students to be able to do all 3 of these for most of the letters.  I have students who can tell me the name of the letter when they see it.  I have students who can tell me the letter they want when they hear its sound, but then ask me what does the letter look like. Although they can find it when they look through the alphabet, they cannot write it from memory yet.  Conversely, I have students who can tell me the letter name, when I hold it up but may still ask me, what does it looks like if they do not see me holding it.   Now I am not sure which happens more often.  I wonder if the letter name is less because you are automatically providing them with the visual image?  At any rate there is this third stage that has
to happen before I say a child knows their letters.  They must have built a visual image of the letter in their heads.  This image should appear when they say, or hear the sound of a letter, or hear the name of the letter. The quicker they can "see" the image of the letter, the quicker they begin to write it.  If the image is not there for them, they will ask, what does it look like?  For children who ask this question therefore, I need to make sure they are getting visual practices of the letter, usually with sock and chalk, or writing the letters.  This is another reason why producing the letters helps them to form the visual, muscle memory of each letter.  I think all three areas are  important and must be connected before I can say any child truly knows their letters.  Could it hold he same for words? Could the production of words that the child writes help to form the visual patterns they will use to identify that word in print.  They seem to need to connect the visual word they write, with its printed counterpart as well. These connections are also very important.  I cannot see isolating one aspect of any of this letter learning, teach it first in a sequence and then add the others.  I like working with the whole, I find it accommodates more children this way.  Letters, sounds, and images, reading and writing, together.
     The children are making their own connections to print now.  With the letter b and Boo, we did bowling pictures with busses in them.  Well the conversation about all these B words was good to hear as they made these  connections and then gave me the credit, undeserved, for them.  They wrote many b's on their writer's workshop bowling memory pictures today (Thurs.) Morning class wrote/drew about Halloween that they chose to do.  I continue to take individual pictures of the children at work during center time.  I
record their stories and then use these in a write up that I will read to the parents to open our interviews with.  It is a lot of work but it personalizes the learning for them and tells them how important the play is.
 I do want to emphasize this s well.  I do the skill learning but my center time is important to me.  It is their choice time and while sometimes they do have a must do center they will have many days to do complete the must do.  I want at least an hour of uninterrupted time for my centers.  Then we can explore and learn and get into projects that expand what we know, and help us learn together.  I want the learning to be social  the "I who we are", as the Italians in Reggio would say.  I depend on this.      

Clay came out today and mouse paints.  The story was read first but not completely.  The blue mouse stepped in the yellow puddle something happened, but I won't say what etc.  I told them mouse paints were out and that they could explore and find out what happens.  Coffee filters and food coloring and water in the primary colors are out.  Ice cube trays for testing as well.  For the clay I had the children experiment with snakes and balls of different sizes.  I got letters in the PM class.  I was most pleased.  We
ended with songs and stories,  our favorite Anansi ones.

The children came in costumes today, that is a story in itself.  I came as the witch.  I realized today that I did not really put myself into Halloween this year.  I think it was because I was not doing Halloween at all this afternoon.  Our classes went bowling instead.  So I had two completely different days and the bowling crew missed out on any literacy events. Halloween brought its songs, Mountain Top Monster, Looking For Dracula, Anansi, and 3 Ghosts.  It brought stories, new ones today and one of my favorites, I'm Coming To Get You by Tony Ross.  It is a story about a monster going through the galaxy destroying planets.  He spies earth and Tommy Brown.  He is coming to get Tommy Brown.  Tommy searches at night time for monsters in his house before going to bed.  In the morning he exits his house not thinking about monsters when the monster jumps out from behind a rock (pebble) at Tommy only to find it is Tommy who is the monster as he is a giant compared to this monster.  We had scarecrow stories and spider stories too.  It has not been a holiday waste of time. 

Today the children share read, Spin, Spider, Spin, they created scarecrows out of wood in the morning, they drew themselves as they came dressed, wrote down the letter they thought the name of their character started with and then copied the exact spelling of the word.    I also took a photograph of each child so that the two can go into their scrapbooks for another recorded event. So I would not say the day passed too badly.  I did write, I see me on the sheets that said Who were you on Halloween?   I was
a_______________.  The ' I see me' part I added because I wanted to see if they could read it.  3/4's of the class could, no trouble.  I am not proud of the sentence mind you but at least it made some sense with the others and their picture of themselves. 
     
Now I did not do so well with the bowling.  They did not have any literacy events except a discussion of the day at the end of our bowling time and we did do our Counting's Easy poem.   They did talk and cheer each other on.  I felt that there were slimmer picking's here though.  Terry

October 30

I started out the year with the word connections.  I wanted to connect most the learning in the class to the children who occupied the classroom.  In working in this area , I have begun to realize how much the system actually works against connecting with the students or the learning in the classroom.  I am so busy being accountable, providing newsletters, calendars, going to meetings, testing and keeping track of results that not much time is left over for making connections with the children.  A common complaint I am sure but one that does not make any sense when you think about early childhood. We should be structured so differently as to allow for more connections not less.  I am hoping I win a lottery just so that I can hire a secretary.  I wonder if there is anything like a work experience secretary for the classroom?
     Stories are another part of life in the classroom.  Each day many stories are acted out and I miss too many of them.  I depend on those stories to plan curriculum, and know where I should be going.  I was feeling very disconnected with the holidays, nightly meetings, and paper work that took the time I had for thinking about the children.  So today camera in hand, I visited children in the centers.  I took pictures of their work, noted playmates, and wrote down the story behind their play.  In the block corner two children were on a boat trip.  The steering wheel was used to steer the ship.  I had put up a map of the world showing various animals in this area, waiting to develop an 'Anansi Lives Here' board. They were using
the map to decide on where they were going.  I also had a bunny, dog, and cat that were friends hanging out in the house corner.  They were just about to go out for food.  A ramp system was built by the children today by the group that has been creating ramps out of the train tracks and driving the cars down it.  We built it and then they had races and crashes.  This ramp building with the train set has been going on for about 2 weeks now.  Also an animal den was being built by two boys for the wolves (coyotes) in the
desert.  I wrote down what each child said and took a picture for them.  We will put these up.  These are literacy events too and that is why I have included them.  The children are in dramatic play form, and that is a high quality play.  They are making and sharing scripts, talking and communicating with each other and with me.  Even map reading was involved in this play today.  I needed to make this connection  for myself.  I wanted to be connected to the children's ideas and validate them in the process.

 We also discovered Boo today.  In 5 Little Pumpkins the wind goes Whooooooooooooo went the wind.  I asked the children a few days ago about the oo sound that they heard and what letters they think would produce that sound.  Today I mention the letters and introduced the new letter B for them.  They had no trouble connecting the whoooo to Boo  for boo and wrote it on the ghosts they designed spontaneously.  We sing 123 ghosts for this. 

My favorite books were read today.  Isabel, There's A Nightmare in my closet, Don't Eat Spiders.  The children enjoyed these.  I also reviewed the letters, sounds etc.  Our Looking For Dracula song is also a big hit, this one by Charlotte Diamond.  I had pumpkin carving evening tonight and a meeting.  My day has just ended!  Terry

October 27

I had a good literacy day today.  I am not sure exactly why I feel that way.  I think I have come to really appreciate the subtle lessons that are happening and being supported in the classroom now.  The children are not afraid to tell me their ideas anymore.  As I was working on the Peek at the Week sheets in small groups I could talk to the children.  As a small group we worked on some letters and words and kind of shared with each other what we could name.  We helped each other to support that review.  When they
needed a sound for a letter they heard in the word, I said the word for them and they named the letter.  If they said what does that look like?  I pointed the alphabet chart out and had them sing it while I pointed to the letters until they came to the one they needed.  If it was a word on the board or in a poem I asked them if they knew where that word could be found. I repeated a line from a poem that is displayed or is on the board and the child got up to go find the word, point it out, and then copy it.  Other children helped too.  It was not directly answering their questions but modeling how they could solve their own problems independently but with support.  They reached a little further this way, yet felt satisfied not strained.  It felt good to me, like I actually was accomplishing something greater than the group teaching I do at the beginning of the day.  I am not saying I would give that up either.  But I need more of this small group,
supported exploration.  I miss this in writer's workshops because again I am dealing with the larger group, and although the same things happen in answering children's individual questions it does not feel as intimate or special.
 
The second thing I enjoyed was gathering their spider stories from the webs we did in the PM class.  I was rushed and wanted to get them so I thought I would have them sit at the second group time and just get one or two children.  I told the children they could talk or read quietly to each other.  Well this group was never as quiet as this.  They were listening to each others constructions or retellings of how the spider built the webs. They wanted to come up and do this.  Is it my turn?  And then they would listen to each other.  They knew this was hard work, and they were automatically supporting one another.  I found this quite surprising  and very satisfying.  They wanted to hear each others stories.  Then I remembered tonight that I have not acted out their stories for a while.  We have been so busy with the other projects.  The shape books, and pumpkin books give me a one on one experience with the children but the other has to
be worked in too.  

We made spiders using our hands and cut them out.  I wanted to put spin spider spin poem on it.  It is a kind of busy work but then we played with these Anansi's and kept playing with the poem.  We would act out the "and greet the guests who come inside part."  doing as gruesome or spooky a voice as we could and then laughing about it.   I read That's Good, That's Bad and they loved that too and we acted that line out.  They worked together today, they were engaged maybe because two students said they knew this book and it was good.  In the end I pretended to give one of the children a hug and a smooshy kiss.   The morning class also got into Looking For Dracula and then I told them a jump tale  - The Teeny Tiny Woman.  For those of you who may not use this name, these are those stories where you make your voice go so low to barely a whisper " and she poked her head out of the covers and said"   and then you go very loud and say "Take It".  The children jump, thus the name.  I will be gathering scarecrow stories and pictures soon as well.

I want to get to these and forget reports and interviews which only take time away from what we want to do.  I should just do two a day after class or something and not packed into two evenings.  I will have 15 minute interviews but I will also have a Celebration of Learning or Open House on the Saturday before.   My How I Feel About My Learning forms went home today.  These are forms with questions about classroom subject areas, rules etc.  I can write my name... I can write some letters now.... I can tell you
two things about spiders...  I like working with my cross-age buddy...  I share my ideas during group time... Etc.  The children go over this with their parents at home.  They put down sometimes (S), yes(Y), not yet(NY). We will review these during our interviews and they are put into their scrapbooks.  

My closing thought is that, it is true that the environment can support literacy learning when it is planned well.  I am just beginning to really realize this because I have made a greater effort this year to do this.  The
support is there.  The charts, word wall, literacy board, the poems, I can model.  I could not have had today without them.  

October 26

I had a different plan today.  It came to me at around 5:30 am.  The children had been interested in two questions on spiders.  One had to do with an argument of whether or not spiders live in the desert and the other had to do with their webs.  I have a book called Spider Webs.  It is a great book.  It shows how garden spider spins an orb web.  It outlines the stages in a black and white format and then shows a real photograph of the spider at work on the opposite side.  I told the children that for writer's workshop we would look at the question and talk they had on spider webs.  I gave them a piece of paper with leaves around the corners and a lead line already drawn.  As I read the book I would add the stages to my picture (the one they had matched the book too) and they would also draw their interpretation of the spider's building.  It was interesting to see.  I told them this was hard because it meant they had to be very good listeners and they could not interrupt anyone unless during the pauses they wanted to get help or share a solution etc.  The spokes were not always spokes and the spiral was interesting too.  All children completed an orb web complete with spider and food a bug that was wrapped up in a web net as his insides were turning to mush.   Then I asked them to tell me about their spider.  How they made the web what is happening etc.  I got some great stories.  Even ones where the spider dies because a person stepped on the web.  These will go up with the other two drawings of the spiders.  During centers we
finished up projects mostly and I finished up my testing.  I want to pursue spiders but the other Halloween stuff is coming too.  We measured and recorded the weights of the pumpkins.  We ended with Anansi and The Moss Covered Rock and our ghost song. 

PM went the same way basically.   We ran late as I was trying to finish the shape books so that they could go home.  We ended with Hayride, Anansi and The Moss Covered Rock, and the Anansi song.

October 25

I started my day with a review of our spider facts, and the book jumping spiders like I did in the PM yesterday. The children changed their pictures.   I also read the small readers the children asked me to and I reviewed what an author and an illustrator is, they did not know this.  I showed them where to find the title etc.  We worked on our pumpkin books and I did testing.  Children wrote some letters including I see _______, hi _______. One mom was telling me how proud her child was because he could read the
word cards I sent home with the children yesterday.  I sent letters that we worked on and the key words home.  The children are beginning to use the writer's center more.  I want to get them into the art studio soon.  The children were talking about spider families and animal families in the desert today and thread I may be looking at next.  We ended with Anansi the Spider song by Raffi and 123, Ghosts are we song plus Anansi and the Talking Melon.

PM I finished the testing and I started after gym and library.  I had only on hour with the children alone and with the testing we worked on various centers like masks, and math and the writing centers.  The children
exchanged mail today 4 separate letters went around.  That was good to see. We ended with part of the story Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock, and two songs by request, Cow and Hayride ones.  I had a lot of mail to pass out too.  

October 24

I believe I slightly over planned today, however, we did manage to work despite another fire drill and my 33 minutes prep time which comes once every six days on a different day.     

I began in the usual fashion with the reading of the I see, and a review of the letters and words we were working on.  I gave the children individual letters that I keep in the box of 38 drawers.  They got the
letters that would form the words we know.  Then I told them that I was going to ask them to come up and make the words we have been working on.  If they had that letter they would come up and make the word.  I would not spell the word but I could help them find it on the board or in our poems if they needed the help.  I began with hi.  Two children came up and stood there.  I asked if the letters made hi the way the children were standing. They had to work together to get the proper order.  To emphasize the words first, second, etc. coming from the acting out of our pumpkin poem, I asked them what the first letter in the word hi was - who was holding the first letter in the word Hi was my question.  Letter, word vocabulary I was working  on too.  Then we made me.  The children did not leave a space between the words( I had the other children remain standing), we decided we needed a space.  It was good because they could feel the problem.  I went through the word list and then I gave them something harder.  I said we would make a sentence together.  I see mom was the sentence we made.  We had to add another person to hold the stop sign.  They had to work out the direction, order etc.  It took them a long time but they did it.  They had fun and hopefully a kind of kinesthetic awareness of space and letters and words.  We will do this in smaller groups as we go through the year.  I then read Who Sank The Boat and we talked about the objects that sank for us.  We then came up with theories on why some of the objects sank and some floated.  Our message today was Do pumpkins sink or float?  The children worked in groups and found this out, predicting first and then testing their predictions.  These were all recorded so that they could go up for
documentation purposes.   

In the PM class sink and float has just been put out for exploring. After the letter, word play we talked a little about tarantulas, then for writer's workshop  I gave them Xeroxed copies of their first spider pictures
and a pen.  I told them that I was going to read them a short story about jumping spiders.  They could change anything on the picture that they wanted to as I read the story. If they wanted to change the legs, or eyes or where they belonged etc. they could.  I told them that these pictures are not wrong.  They are what we thought and as we learn more we can change our minds.  That is what learning is.  We can think one way and then find out something else and change our minds.  This is not right or wrong.    We did that.  On Thursday we will draw another view of our spider after they have looked at both pictures and the plastic spiders.  WE are continuing to make great masks and scarecrows.  I could not test again I was busy with the scarecrows.  The desert spider home is a great hit as well.  We ended (both classes) with 5 little pumpkins for first, second, etc. again and Anansi and the Talking Melon.  One child gets the humor first before the others. Sophisticated humor is hard for young children, even subtle humor.  This one though starts laughing right away and the others just look at her because they do not understand why she is laughing.  It makes me laugh too.  I want to get the stories and conversations around the making of the scarecrows and masks but I have been unable to.  

October 23

Today I began with a review of our letters and words and introduced two new letters.  A as a letter and a word, and O.  Then we sounded out and I wrote the word mom.  We can now send letters home to mom and write things like hi, mom and then the rest of their message.  They liked this idea.  I then wrote
my message today which was, Do spiders live in the desert?  The question came from the children's discussion on spiders and this was one point they could not agree upon.  I had a book I was going to read to them but I wanted them to do some writing so to speak so I asked a child to come up to the chart board and gave him a felt pen.  Underneath the question I told him to write A, which he did as I had just introduced this, and then I told the class I wanted this child to write Coyote and what sounds did they hear in coyote?  They said k and c for the first sound and I said we can use c. They then got the o and the t.  The child wrote these letters and I added lives in the desert.  We did he same procedure for a mouse, a cactus, a rattlesnake, a gecko, scorpion etc.  When they were getting restless, I quit and asked them if any of these were spiders?  I then read the book Desert the Scholastic easy reader.    The last page has the picture and write up of the tarantula.  

I had a bin of plastic animals that I showed them of the animals in the desert.  I asked them if they would like to set-up a desert habitat in the table with the tiny rocks.  This they will continue to work on through the weeks ahead.  I am only doing a few animal families as my emphasis right now is on spiders.  But those children who stay away from the spiders can come to play with the tortoise family, or coyote families, etc. too and still be involved.  Because of Halloween I added that stretchy web material you can buy to the sand table to make some neat webs.  I am hoping they will make spider webs for our Anansi board soon.    Rocks are there because we are in the process of talking about them as we polish our rocks.  

The children went to literacy/table centers for the first while.  I put picture lists out today with their 5 Little pumpkin books.  The poem is in book form so that they can design their own pumpkins and then read the story, later with me.  The picture list has all the children's pictures on it with the name below it.  I use this when I do not have a parent helper. The children start the center, I ask for the first volunteers.  They cross out their picture when they finish and go get a child whose picture is not crossed out.  That way the center continues without me.  When asked by a student the asked child must go, or find a substitute.  The children were creating their masks, working with letters and numbers, shapes, and a spider counting game.  While the children were at tables I worked with four children on the floor with sock and chalk.  I had the children that need some one on one with the letters.  I took them and we worked on flash card letters, writing the letters on chalk boards and then producing words that they had to write or find like mom, hi, see, etc.  They enjoyed this and I let them go after about 10 minutes.  Regular centers followed and I continued with my testing - only 2 more. 

Pm went the same except I have not done table work with them.  I am not sure why I have a hard time picturing that in this classroom.  I need to put out a few more choices or work them out in my head and then start table work. Our session went a little longer because we did a religious story David and
Goliath and a new prayer so I felt they should go to centers.  I did not get any testing done here because all of a sudden they wanted to make scarecrows.  I had been encouraging this for 2 weeks and had wood pieces in neat shapes from cut spindles for staircases and junk.  They add material and buttons etc. to create them.  They have ignored this until today. Suddenly I was very busy with the glue gun.  These scarecrows all have stories that go with them.   We ended with an Anansi story Anansi and the Talking Melon, a scarecrow story by Cynthia Rylant  The Scarecrow, and the acting out of our pumpkin song.  The children also shared their masks and scarecrows to encourage the others.  Stories and song in the AM as well. 
     I would like to explain something about the way I set up my classroom. Loris Malaguzzi says that our rooms should be like 3 ring circuses with many different things going on to involve children or provoke children into interacting with the materials.  I do love choices, and can handle many of them.    I love to set out a wide array of activities and work from them. We do some, ignore others, come back to, go forward from, etc.  It is more like a spiral I guess.  I may add webs to the sand table for example to get to spider families, but I let the children play or explore the toys first before I actually use them for a purpose.  I make suggestions but wait and watch to see what is happening.  I have scarecrows all over the room and wonderful stories which did not take until now.    I  had to show them the junk materials that they have been bringing in because of the scarecrows and we will have to organize them so that they can have a part in this process and want to take care of the materials.  

I work the literacy skills in from there.  The stories, the sharing of the process and the drawing that will represent their scarecrow.  I will also have pictures of them.  The picture and two dimensional drawing of the scarecrow will go into their scrapbook. I want them to reconstruct their scarecrows in a new way by taking the 3 dimensional version and turning it into a 2 dimensional one.  They will come to know perspectives and front, back, sides, etc.  This is how I choose to work.  I seem to prefer the whole being around me and then  working to the specifics.   There is no right or wrong here.  This is simply the way I work best, it is not the way others may work best.   Meanwhile the morning class will be working with the pumpkins they brought in to see if they will sink and float, what they weigh etc.  Scarecrow materials are there but not being noticed.  Sink and Float has not happened in the PM class yet.  We take different roads to the same outcomes.  

October 20   

I have decided that these entries cannot really present the flavor of the learning environment in my classroom.    I am not able as I am presently doing things to present the literacy connections that happen during center time.  Today the children were building a bus.  I suggested money and tickets.  They went to make some and we phonetically spelled some words.  They are more confident about adding that first letter, even though they need the support.  They are actually trying to say the words now.  There are subtle differences in their approach to this kind of task now that I cannot really explain but just feel.  It is in the look, the innocence now of the attempt, there is not the same burden of doubt or correctness.  It is a small change but at least we are heading in the right direction.  I cannot push too far, or too fast as I do not want to add to the burden but continue to subtract from it.  Much support, acceptance and encouragement are my mainstay now.   There were the girls making words using stamps at the writing center.  There was the child who was not content with one letter but wanted more of cow.  There were my three boys who decided they were all at the water table and wrote down y for water and T for table because their friend did and they were quite confident in his response.  This trustful sharing of information is taking place too now.    

The reason for the last example was because today is Friday and on Friday I meet with 6 children at a time and the Peek at the Week sheets.  The children take home what I write about what we did that week and they do a reflection on the back.  They draw something they learned, thought about or did in class that week.  We get to talk about the week, problems, acts of kindness that were done etc.  At the top of the reflection side, I wrote out the words that we have been 'reading'.  Some of the children read them to me, and for others I sounded out the sounds and they told me what the word was.  I was modeling the sound, letter connection I want them to hear.  I know this will take much time to build in, but this is where I start, with the oral sounds alone and also paired to the letter we happen to be working on.  

I truly believe that it is very important to provide both sound and letters together when teaching the alphabet, not just the letter names or just the sounds.  There is a reciprocal support built in when you teach both together.   When you consider that children have already  built an oral language system before they came to school, it just seems to make sense.  I also go by their responses to my questions. " What letter do you hear in table?" I ask.  "T" they say and then ask, what does T look like?  They know 'T' by the sound but still need to make the visual pairing.  So I provide both avenues for the children.  We worked on words like this today.  Again, I asked each child to take one word of their story and to write down the first letter. They did this with a subtle display  of more willingness to attempt the task.  "This is not hard." was what I got.

Group time began with a walk down memory lane.  We read Big Al which we read before and we talked about favorite books we want to read again.  I suggested the helpers pick a favorite book each day so that we could hear our favorites over again too.  Then we sang all the songs we have sung except Thanks A lot which is so slow for us we do not really like it.  We did Stop, Look and Listen, Insy Spider, Biscuits in the Oven, Oat, and Beans and Barley grow, Hayride, Mountain Top Monster and Did You Feed My Cow?  We had a great time before centers just singing and jumping around.   I found I had a very productive Friday during center time.  Without parental help I was able to get 4 children through assessments.  My students are also ready to take the readers they have 'read' before group time,  home. One child finally asked for them.  Each day we share these little readers we find words like see, the, hi, and I say this is a good book to practice finding see, stop, or the or I with.  We continue to find the periods too. I will begin this training process sometime next week I hope.

We read Anansi Goes Fishing, and Anansi The Spider by request in the pm  for our second group time.  We also did 5 Little Pumpkins and acted this out. I kept stressing who is the first pumpkin, second pumpkin, third pumpkin, etc.  They each get to sing their own parts and then they roll away after the big whoooooooooooooooo went the wind part.  
     

October 19

AM class.  I began with a reading of the little books, they got into this so I continued right through registration and did not do attendance. It is hard to go with the moment, we are so trapped by the system.  Then I went on to the alphabet song and we sang that through twice.  Then I talked to them about how knowing the letters was really a small part of the literacy puzzle.  That we now knew that we can put letters together to make words.  If we want hi and I sounded this out, I would write and the class said hi.  See and again I sounded this out and the class said see.  I also said that we can hear the letters in the words too.  I then did some phonemic awareness first by saying sounds and they told me the word and then by saying the word and asking them what letter they heard at the beginning of the word that they would write down for that word.  What letter do you hear in pumpkin, what letter would you write if you did today's story about
pumpkins?  About trees, running, playing, mom, friends, etc.  I then told them that today I wanted them to  really get to know  the word explore.  I told them how we have been exploring sink and float, spiders, shapes and lines, letters and numbers.  We talked about our conversations and how we were not looking for right or wrong but just trying things out and exploring and sharing ideas. 

Then I handed out paper and this time I told them that I wanted them to pick one word that was in their story and to say the word and put down any letter they heard in that word.  I told them the first letter would probably be the easiest.  Then I went around gathering stories and seeing what letter they chose.  Those that needed help were only given "what word did you want to write?  I would say the word and then they would write down a letter. There are cards with the alphabet on all the tables so when the question
came of them saying the letter and then saying what does that look like I showed them the card so that they could find the letter.  I let them find the letter offering some modeling or singing the alphabet song only when needed.  This happened in both classes and everyone completed this with no I can'ts, no worrying about the letters not being exact etc.  They actually felt proud.  Three students surprised me.  One wrote an entire message I could read.  I knew she could read but this was the first time she attempted this much writing.  A second girl did the same.  She wrote that she went to McDonald's.  She had so many of the necessary letters.  I did not expect this from her.  The third child also a girl, knows how to do much more but is not giving me what she is able to do.  I am pondering this one.  My little boy who had tantrums had his faithful HI on the paper and when I asked him about another word he wanted, he got the letter and wrote it down.  You should have seen the smile.  He was so proud of himself. 

Today at the art studio there were sheets of  large construction paper with the corners cut off.  There were squares of mirror paper and shapes of all kinds in many different materials including shiny florescent colors. They were to play with their faces by making faces and then observing and talking about how their faces change with different expressions.  Then they were going to play with the shapes and create faces on the paper. Again no glue sticks were given.  They played and only those children who really wanted to glue their faces were given sticks.  The others would return to play some more until they too were ready to glue.  I include these activities because there is a literacy connection here.  It is in the trying, experimenting and risking idea that I am developing in the room. The same play and time is required of the children when learning or experimenting with any literacy tasks.  I want the message to be consistent, I want the experimenting with the other art media to later be used as another language (Reggio) for the children to use to express what they know.  I want them to enjoy the literacy events as much as the others in the room. We ended with Mountain Top Monster and Did You Feed My Cow? songs and the book Animal Shapes by Brian Wildsmith. 

PM went the same mostly.  I read Anansi Goes Fishing by Eric Kimmel and we did Did You Feed My Cow?  I am busy testing with the children so I am missing much and do not feel as connected with them.  I try to do 4 children a day so that I can have some time with them but my small group conversation time has been cut.  I am also not reading as many stories as usual but am needing more songs and poems right now.  

October 18

I have a somewhat set routine I guess for the kinds of play we do with language before we start our day.  We sing the alphabet song, review the letters and sounds, try some new ones, go over our poems or rhymes, I am now asking for the letter they think certain words begin with -this coming from our thanksgiving food pictures, saying sounds and asking what word it is, and now with no, go, top, hop, pop, some rhyming words as well.  I will do flash letters, numbers, or words to see how we are doing as well.  I pick and choose as I go along and see what they are needing or want to do, etc. I continue to do I see----, hi______ for my helpers and we looked for the in our new 5 Little Pumpkins poem.  New songs started yesterday are - Mountain Top Monster (introduced with Harry And The Terrible Whatzit) and Hayride/
for the PM class Hayride,  and Did You Feed My Cow?  They are beginning to love all these songs and requests are coming in.  Biscuits in the Oven is one they always ask for and I am getting lets do that again.  One of my quietest students really goes for Mountain Top Monster and actually acts this out.    Ghosts and When There's One, One, One, will have to be worked in as well. 

Today I had some special stories to read to them.  Animal shapes was one to talk about how shapes come together to make pictures -again. Yesterday I shared Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf because I brought back some maple leaves from Toronto.  I also introduced A Story  A Story and Anansi The Spider by McDermott. I have a puppet spider that stands for Anansi all year.   There are spiders in the sand table and float and sink in the water table coming from the talk about the boats that were there.  Spider talk from
Anansi ended in a discussion about what we think we know about spiders. This conversation was recorded and I modeled the writing of their ideas. This happened on Thursday.  We had read I Love Spiders before and our poem spin, spider, spin.  They like the 'great the guests who come inside' part
to the poem it showed up on what they know about spiders -"spiders eat the guests they greet."  Today I came back to this conversation and reviewed their thoughts. I also added anything new.    Then for writer's workshop, or in lieu of as we used drawing in this form of communication I asked the children to draw what they thought a spider looked liked.  I gave them a small piece of paper, half of the 81/2 by 11 sheets and a black felt tip pen.  I told them to include body parts, legs, eyes, mouth, anything they thought a spider had.  Then I recorded the number of each item.  If the child said 8 legs but drew 16 we counted them and I pointed out the difference from what they said to what they drew.  I recorded what they drew if they did not want to change the pictures.  I told them before I was not looking for right or wrong, just what they thought.  The pictures were great, this surprised me.  Everyone could do this, I did not get arguments. I was surprised too by several of my boys 5 to be exact who were the last to leave because they colored in parts and really took time with this.  This was a first for them.  We do need to find children's passions and interests and teach to these, it does make such a difference.  We will talk more about spiders and then come back to these pictures and see if we want to make any changes.  I will continue to record what they learn about spiders by how they present their ideas of spiders.    This will go up onto a board with picture #1, 2, 3, clay spider, junk spider, etc.  Do Spiders Live Here? is one board that is going up as that
was my PM classes argument about spiders and the desert. I will put a mixture of habitats up and we will see if they live in those habitats.  They will then learn about what spiders belong to what habitat and they will add them to the board.  A project is beginning to build.  The other one is Anansi' home.  Again the idea of environment came up in the AM class and the argument was about water and spiders and no one in the AM class thought spiders lived in the desert.  We can add to these boards and create spider habitats, do small reports, make a spider book for Christmas, whatever we dream up together.  I think I will add some spider web material to the sand table and we can add some food too.   Characters for Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock or The Talking Melon can go there too. 

On Thursday we talked about rocks and we looked at and held rocks. Again I asked them to tell me why the rocks were different, where you could find rocks, etc.  We decided to change our rocks and put them into a polisher.  Each child picked out two rocks from the pile and we drew them onto our rock recording sheet.  We then wrote a letter that began a word that described our rock, r for rough, etc.  They then copied the complete word onto the sheet.  We will continue to record the changes in our rocks as we go along.  

Then today we returned in the AM class to sink and float which they have been exploring for a week now at the water table.  With my parent helper the children came in small groups picked out 3 objects, drew or
traced them  into the appropriate  boxes on their sink and float sheet and then wrote down S if they thought it would sink and f if they thought it would float.  They tested the objects and wrote down in the second box what the object did. S for sink, F for float.  They gave the letters by listening to the first sound.  They were asked to do this.  I am trying to connect this skill with actual use or in application. They will have to solve the problem of how to make an object that sinks, float and how many of an object will sink a boat, coming from the story Who Sank the Boat..  They may want to make boats too.  We ended with songs mentioned above and an Anansi story.  I am testing the children each day for shapes, capital letters, writing
their name, quantity, rote counting, and number recognition and writing numbers 0-5.  I ask if they can tell me their address or phone number.  I am also noting again which hand they are using- right or left.  


This may seem rambling, but things are actually connected to each other.  I am following many strands
to meet the same outcomes.

October 16

I know I reviewed letters sounds and played with words. I will do this part when I can remember it. Right now the following thoughts are on my mind.  

I was sitting next to a baby on the plane on the way back from Toronto and I was listening to him babble.  I got to thinking that children really do go through quite a phonemic awareness stage when they are learning to talk.  They play with the sounds of the language and love doing it.  This is very important work as this will lead to real talk.  It is without meaning in the beginning and sometimes even out of context, just the play and enjoyment and reaction from those around the baby keeps them going.  So if, in the exploration of print for both reading and writing, children are also given an opportunity to babble, would this not be an extension of something they are already familiar with?  By babbling I mean playing with the sounds the letter makes, playing with rhymes and twists like lime, brime, etc.  chants, music poems, stringing letter sounds together to see if they can guess your word and later theirs, spreading the sounds apart, listening for beginning sounds, or rhymes, all of these that make us play with language.  I do not think this has to be interpreted as something so different.  It should be fun and set in the spirit of playing with the language.

Also a second thought.  We often talk about waiting for a child to be ready to learn something.  I have come to the conclusion that we may wait on some skill training because we may be presenting the skill inappropriately, or in ways not suited to young children.  However, the children do not wait.  They just go about creating their own language system, noticing important things along the way if someone around them who knows them well, is able to support the exploration, give them feedback, and listen to them (the parent).  Parents need to be reconnected to the reading/language picture.  They play a vital role in this literacy process.  

October 11

Today was very busy and very tiring.  In the AM class, I got caught running for things and was not with the children on the rug.  They did keep sharing books however and asked if I would read some of them.  I did.  We did our spider poem and I asked them if they could find the word spider, in the poem and they did.  They guessed which name was Brandon and not Christopher by the first letter when I asked them why is this Brandon and not this.  I went over the letter names and sounds, and we read our message.
 I then read Stone Soup as that is what we were making today.  Then I had them come to a large paper on the floor.  I gave them their food sheet from yesterday and told them to look at their food picture.  I wanted them to know create food with paper by tearing it or cutting it into shapes and then putting them together.  This was interesting.  Cutting is very hard for some children that's why I like doing this project.  They could tear paper too. Once they developed the idea a plate or bowl with a food on it, they could glue it to the paper.  We talked about how to do this and what we ate etc. as we worked.  Later I gathered the left over shapes and put them into a pile.  Then I asked two children at a time to return to the picture and use the shapes and make more food.  They could put them together any way they chose.  They actually enjoyed this part, they found this much easier.  Now I will have them revisit their food work once again to label only in small groups this time.  I am supposed to be testing my children.  It is getting more difficult to do this.  I better get started next week.  We ended with the story Growing Vegetable Soup and The Very Busy Spider.  We also had a discussion about what they knew about spiders. I recorded the information
and then we will begin to take a better look at spiders. I want to know a little more from the children before I proceed with this. 

The PM was different as we had a Thanksgiving assembly.  They did so well considering I was asking them to do something they were not really ready to do- I think it is too early for a performance from them.  I did not push this or rehearse forever, I just took it as something they had to accommodate to me for, so I also accommodated to them and didn't spend a great deal of time on this.  I spent time on other poems and stories I knew they could master.  We sang Thanks A lot and did a Thanksgiving poem with their
cross-age partners.  That was the day.  They went to the library with my relief teacher.   

October 10

The missing word on their stop light poem was GO the children noticed that and I added NO so those are two words for our chart and cards.  We are playing now at rhyming them.  My literacy board changed for today.  I have as the main sentence I see ________,hi __________.     Each morning I put in the names of the helpers and they try to figure that out.  I also have the line done in capitals.  In the AM class the second sentence reads Hi, Anansi the spider.  I told them about T yesterday and then introduced them to the word 'the' that was on the board in the Anansi sentence.  We played at pointing out the 'the' word when we heard someone say it until we gave up as it is used a lot.  There are new poems up, 5 Little pumpkins, The Scarecrow, and Spin, spider, spin, which they asked me to read, I wonder if they did that because that one was written on orange cards.  We sang the alphabet song, played with the sounds of these letters and then, with me sounding out words and them seeing if they knew what I was saying.  All this to prepare for writer's workshop which followed.  I had the children work in pairs today because I said that I wanted them to talk, share ideas and help each other to solve any problems they had drawing food.  I asked them to draw the food they ate for Thanksgiving.  I chose this because of the shapes and because I want to extend this tomorrow.  They drew the food I scribed the story and then I gave the papers back at the second group time and this time, as I knew the food names, I asked them to use the sticks and bumps, or curves to create the letters they think are in the food words.  Write down any letters you hear.  Again they had a partner but I was modeling for them.  If you had turkey what letter would you write.  I took any answer and talked through that letter.  I was modeling this for them as I want them to start doing this for their journals.  Food words were easy to concentrate on as they are single words for them and they already had them in their minds.  It worked out much better for them to split this up like I did.  Tomorrow they will use these pictures and letters again to create a table of food from paper. I think they can cut food shapes or rip them, not draw them this time. Again I will have them write the letter of the food by their picture.  This will provide for another revisiting of their original work which is my other intention.

We have a new book to begin working on this week.  My Shape Book   I changed the core sentence to I see a square.   I can draw a square.    I see a triangle.  I can draw a triangle.  This time they try to create the shape and I gave them the words I see which they already are familiar with.  We went on our shape scavenger hunt, which allowed us much use of the language of shapes, triangle etc.  

The PM worked differently as we had a fire drill and we were making stone soup, and we also did the shape hunt.    Tops and Bottoms, Growing Vegetable Soup, and Ann McGovern's version of Stone Soup are the books I am reading.  We also read a pumpkin book.  I have a bulletin board up on Anansi Lives Here.  I also added spiders and the river rocks to the sand table. Yesterday's talk centered around spiders, I am gathering this for a possible look at spiders.  I also put out wood shapes, wire and spools and some store scarecrows at the wood working table.  I want the exploration first so I did not put out glue but I told them to work in groups and share ideas at all centers today.  I will come back to this wood working table as I want them to explore these materials and invent with them.  They are only ready to
look and touch for now.  AM ended with I Love Spiders, the poem and Insy Weensy Spider song.  PM with the practice for the presentation tomorrow.  My children are not ready to perform yet it will be interesting to see what they do with this.  

October 8

Everything really is integrated.  I read an article in the ECEC journal and I began to ponder some words from the articles.  One phrase stayed with me.  The joy in learning.  Learning should be fun, interesting and rewarding unto itself.  It should connect with the children and involve them.  I do know this but how quickly I forgot when my supervisor came in that day.  The learning was not fun, there was pressure to do it correctly.  I want to ensure that the learning is fun and that I never ask a child to adapt to any kind of skill or program to the point of stressing them out.   I saw that the other day when I observed  a wonderful little girl who already knows so much about our language.  Her parents have already taught her to read I'm guessing.  I did notice that this little girl preferred to socialize, watch other children and help them out in the classroom rather than do writing or reading.  I have been encouraging this play and socializing because I think  this is what she really needs.  I know this does not always please her parents.  Now on Thursday I managed to do some literacy testing of the alphabet to get an idea of the base knowledge of the children.  I have recorded their answers in their notebook that sits in their journal binders.  That way when I work with the children in small groups, I will have an easy access to letters or words or whatever they wish to work on. I will also have this information for parents to see at interview time.  I will later record some of our conversations in here.   I did numbers and quantities to 5, rote counting and the upper case alphabet.
I also had them write their name to record how that was done at this time of the year.   I recorded what the child knew.  I also  put in a label and wrote down something that  the child wanted to work on.

When I was working with the above child I was surprised to see how very nervous she was.  She know all the letters including some lower case ones, numbers etc.  This should have been a breeze for her but she was so nervous she kept biting the sleeve of her shirt.  She continued doing this when we went to practice the poem for our Thanksgiving day program with out cross-age buddies.  By the end of the afternoon she had a wet ring  about four inches wide around her sleeve.  I found this so heart breaking.  She also told me that she has to read to her parents at night mostly instead of them reading to her.  This early knowledge of language has come at too high a price for this little girl.  She is so stressed about doing things right that the testing situation was a real pressure for her.  So I come back to the thought, where is the joy in learning for this one?  I have had other children start the year just as knowledgeable but they had an eagerness and joy to figure out print.  This is something quite different.  When we ask children to bend and accommodate to what we want them to learn, or teach them inappropriately, do we risk the development of joyless learning and stress?  Do we cause them to doubt their own ability?  Somehow right and wrong have entered the picture before experimenting, exploring, approximation and play with numbers and letters for this student.  It has made me rethink my practice.  I need to watch for this.

I did my Peek of the Week sheets with the children actually putting down some letters they thought they heard in their message.  They were way off but I just said write that down.  It was fun.  Our Friday morning was songs and chants and poems and favorite stories.  I just wanted us to enjoy what we had worked on after Thursday's experience.  We ended with the acting out of stories, doing our dance and sharing what nice things the students did to one another through the week.  A kind of compliment gathering.  My PM
went similarly with the difference of drawing wheat with water color pencils and crayons for a card for one of our students who has pneumonia.  We did this instead of a peek of the week picture.  We also finished our wheat weavings and these Thanksgiving cards went home today.  Sometimes I find the holidays interfere with what we are doing.  In this case because of the wheat and farm play in the wheat, the weaving was just an extension of what we were doing.  I read The Best Of Friends a sad story with a happy ending, about death and neglect and the rebirth of a relationship with a cat, and Jesse and James.  "William (the cat) became mean and lean.  He hated everyone and everything. " That is my most well discussed part.  What happens to a neglected cat or person?  Hate builds up and anger.  Meanness
comes out, how is this going to change for William?  I love this book it is a heavy discussion.  "William knew deep in his heart that Jesse was beginning to really love him...."  

October 5

Ahh, I used to be so flexible in my practices.  If plan A did not work, plan B, was soon there and if plan B was not the answer, I could shift to plan C.  There was always much around me that I could draw from if need be. It is different this year as I am sharing space with another teacher in the pm.  I do not have extra stuff of mine and I need to depend only on what I have remembered to bring or have there.  If I forget to bring something I feel I need to scold myself for letting that happen.  I need to develop a different way of handling these bumps.  Also, I sometimes have people come into the room who somehow make me uncomfortable.  I noticed this today in my morning class.  I cannot say exactly why I was uncomfortable but I was.  I found myself saying and doing some things that I would not normally have done.  Even at this late stage of the game I wonder that this can happen to me.  I think I sensed someone in the room who would not understand the 'noise', or the problem solving going on, or why I did not correct the child's E when it clearly was not standard, it threw me.  I was a stranger to myself today and I did not like it.  I felt badly for the children, somehow they were gypped.

Another pet peeve.  Disturbances can come often.  What seems like a little thing can become big.  I had to quickly type up a note to invite my AM parents to an afternoon assembly.  The assembly was scheduled for the PM long ago and suddenly it seemed to be an issue.  I did type up a note and send it home but it meant I started later with the children and I lost them in a sense because I was not there to share books with them a visit for that first little while. I missed making a vital first connection.   I think I need to reevaluate and make sure that my students really do come first. There were better alternatives I could have picked.  
     So for this not so great day in the morning, I did review letters and sounds with the children and then we played with letters as we tried to create them for writer's workshop.  At this point to be honest with you, I
am not concerned with what all the children are doing as long as they are attempting the task.  I have one student who would play helpless if I asked him to draw a straight line, and then give me his absolute minimalist effort if I accepted it.   This one I watch and make sure he does the task, all by himself.  He must make the attempt. Another much younger student I would except even the squiggliest line because he needs all the encouragement and is so relieved and pleased when I accept his early attempts.  He will make marks now where as before he would sit and cry or say NO.  This is a big step for him.  So someone please explain why, when my visitor started correcting some of my children or made them pay attention or whatever I could feel the hairs on my neck stand up.  Okay, so I did not like the message that was being given.  So why would I then change my message to hers for a bit there until I caught myself? She did not understand what I was doing, or how I was working with the children.  Somehow I knew this and felt strange and then wasn't quite me.

In the afternoon I did the same lesson.  Some review of the letters, sounds, poems etc. and then we played with letters and numbers.  I tried to stress the number and letter vocabulary so that they would pay attention for what I was asking and start to see the difference consciously.  Strangely enough I had a sub in here I never met before.  I started the class as usual and I ended up staying to train her to my class as I will not be here for two days next week.  She sat and watched me in the same way but did not help but played with me.  What a different feeling.  Here was someone who understood play, attempt, and approximate.  Can't say how I knew this, just felt it.  I stayed myself and did not become the stranger.  This was confirmed later when she said how much fun she had.  My morning visitor just left, with me trying to explain some things but realizing, it was not to be.  

This was my lesson today at any rate and I thought the writing went well, especially the numbers.  It is great to hear the children say this is a hard one, I can't quite get it but will try it anyway; and then some who
say this is my best one so far...  I am treading carefully now that is why I did not appreciate the first incidence.  I am trying so hard to help my shy, scared to risk, I can't do it children to understand that there is no right and wrong just great attempts at a hard task.  I was mad at myself for forgetting that this morning.  Suddenly the product had to be there and be good as it was being judged  and I did not do well with this.  Books read ; Spiders, Thanksgiving and several of my Sunshine readers.  We also sang
Thanks A Lot.     

October 3

  We continued to play with what we know.  The children are becoming more confident.  There is play at school starting where the children take the pointer and point to the lines on the poems.  They are trying to follow the print.  I keep trying to use letter, word, and sound so that they get used to these terms so that by the end of the year they may begin to understand them.  I began today with sounding out words and seeing if they could tell what I was saying.  I began with words like door, rug, chair, table etc. Then I reviewed letter names and sounds from the board and did some sight words.  I introduced a shape project and then let the children go to centers instead of having writer's workshop as they were restless to begin something.  They went to centers and then my day began to fall apart.  My computer was worked on evidently on Friday afternoon.  Without any warning all my files an records, printer etc. were changed and I was locked out.
Plus any game I put on the computer would not play.  Luckily the person was at our school and could come and unlock my machine and give it back to me. This was an interruption to say the least but a necessary one if I was to gain the use of my computer back.  What he then informed me was that he lost all of my files.  I had saved them to Claris Works and he replaced that with Appleworks 5.  All my forms for gathering information, my fieldtrip forms and years of forms used for scrapbooks etc. are now toast.  It is amazing how that will color one's day.  I literally had to bury my dismay and try to deal with just the moments.  We expect children to do this too.  Sometimes when they may be upset about a missed bus, something that went wrong at home, we just expect they go on.  It is harder than we think.  I am going to
try to understand that better.   We did have writer's workshop today and we worked on pictures and stories which I recorded.  I asked the children to include some letters, etc.  I often get numbers, they think of those as letters too.  It will be another vocabulary word that will become clearer as the year goes on.  I have periods and words they know I also have scribbles because a large group of my children cannot form pictures yet.  I have them doing lines and shapes right now.  I need to work on helping the children learn to use the language of art to express what they know as well.  This will take much time.  I am going to bring out clay to help and maybe start sieves at the water table.  To end the day in the PM we acted out their
stories.  Each child got to choose the characters from their stories and we acted them out.  D was sitting at home.  I went for a walk to the park and saw some trees.  I had two students as trees, trying to sway in the breeze and let their leaves fall.  It was fun.  I want to encourage and develop this dramatic line to their stories.  It keeps them making up better stories.  Vivian Paley does this best.  

October 2

I was absent in the morning today, nursing a cold but I had to go to school in the PM although I still felt like  a truck ran over me.  Adrenalin really helped.  I had such a good day in the PM though.  I am wondering if it was because I was not as tired as I usually am, or if it was first and fresh.  Not sure but the kids sat for a long morning time with the reading and connecting of the Monday morning news.  I was so glad to see that nearly all the children did something on their news.  Either a picture or some letters etc.  I really praised these.  Any way I sat at a table today and did the Red Light, poems with the children and some of the What Have You Seen ?  A new center is in of wheat and farm machines and animals that the children are really into.  They played so well there.  We talked about this center and the machines in it, looking at a book on farm machinery. 

The red lights were well done.  We share read each one and I had them find the word stop, and then they wanted Go so I have now added at their request this word to their word wall, sight words list.  It will be played with. Two children came up to me to show me that they had remembered their stop signs - they are not attached to the word period and find that word strangely unconnected to them.  We reviewed numbers 1 - 5 and then before going home they wrote a number of their choice on the board.  I enjoyed seeing their choices.  Their treasure boxes have come in with better and better stories.  I really enjoy these.  We read a Thanksgiving book and listened to Biscuits in The Oven - song.

       
October 1

I am going to wrap up my direction.  I have begun to realize what I have been doing with the children.  I always have reasons for doing things with them but I have begun to consciously see this.  I wrote in the beginning of the year about how  I set up my classroom environment to support the language and other learning that I wanted to occur in the classroom.   In the same way I came to realize, I have given the children some tools that I now want them to 'play' with.  I guess if I use the analogy of kindergarten builds the foundation for learning I am always hearing about, I have provided the children with a few nails, some tools and perhaps even some wood.  It is not much to start with but there it is.  

My literacy foundation consists right now of their names, our written poems, our sentence on the board  I see ________, hi _________. , the period the comma, these numbers- 0,1,2,3,4,5,   these letters h,i,s,e, and these words  hi, see, I, stop. These words are appearing on their stories and they are using them in their messages to each other.  One of my students wrote STOP _J______________.  He made sure he pointed out both the word stop, his name and the stop sign- period.  This is the raw material that has generated in our class.  Now I am going to let the children play and construct with it.  I am not going to rush on as if I had some kind of curriculum time clock to punch in everyday and zoom on by shoving more and more material at the children because I have to cover the curriculum as is happening in my son's math 30 class.  I believe that students now need time to reflect, create, and construct their own learning.  They can play with these tools, use them for their own purposes, and make meaning from them.  I can use the word cards now to extend that to key words for some of the children.  

At Canadian tire you can buy a utility box for $13.00 or so full of 24 drawers, I think. I am going to label each  drawer with a child's name and keep key words in it.  Old ones will go into their folders, common ones in a file box, and current ones will be in the box. I will try this organization and let you know how it works out.  I will pull those children who need a little more one on one work to encourage them.  I got some advice if a child says "I can't" I am going to try pretend you can.  So for this week those are my plans to work on and encourage the construction of the learning using these tools and any other significant thing that comes up.  We will search for shapes, weave wheat, work on shape pictures and continue the exploration of art drawing materials using and creating images of just lines and shapes.  These do not frighten the children into having to produce some kind of end product.   Last Thursday and Friday things were the same except we added the working with a recipe as the children 'read' through it to make whole grain tea biscuits. We sang Biscuits in the Oven Going To Watch Them Rise and danced to Oats, and Beans, and Barley grows.   We talked some of wheat and harvest.  The wheat center will be added in the PM class.  The AM farm equipment starts on Monday.  Wheat can be grown, drawn, and woven.  I begin soaking the stems tomorrow.   

October 1 Calendar Work

I am finding that my posts are like a reflective diary, hope that is okay , I will get used to this but it is how my mind works.
----------
From: The Starko Family <starko@POWERSURFR.COM>
To: REGGIO-L@POSTOFFICE.CSO.UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: Calendar work
Date: Thu, Sep 14, 2000, 9:59 PM


This is not my post but I was wondering if I could possibly share some of the pressure that has been coming my way since Adams book was published and this interest in the rebirth of phonemic awareness etc. - which was never intended to be just a repeat of the old phonic worksheet. I did read the book and am willing to accept some points.  One, that yes phonemic awareness is important for children to have. I mean by phonemic awareness that children can differentiate or hear the separate sounds in a word.  I could sound out cat or stretch the sounds out and they would be able to tell me the word cat.  Or conversely they say cat and they are able to split out the sounds and hear the phonemes (which are still somewhat
distorted sounds).  This is not phonics in the true sense as there is no pairing of the sound with the letter.  I am saying this so there will not be a misunderstanding of my understanding of the term. 

I believe this skill is used mostly through writing and spelling although then it is paired with the letter representation phonics).  The skill can be looked at as one tool a child can benefit from among many that
can be used first in a writing context and then as a reading strategy - would the word that made sense here start like this one does? or this could have been frog but it starts with a "B" sound. These skills often have to be taught directly or implicitly. Children who have this skill make for better writers/readers is the conclusion.  The process must still be stressed and the writing and reading process modelled.      

The upside is that it encourages teachers to start with the more active activity of writing verses reading only and begin both early skills together via key words or whatever. The idea is that the little they know in writing helps support and adds to the little they know in reading which adds and supports the little they know in writing.  Thus we see the reciprocity of both (Marie Clay's word) -one must consider conversations and ideas too. 

Children struggle with the writing making more sense of the letters and sounds as they use this skill for their own purposes and interests. Poems, rhymes, rhythm, onsets and rimes also come in here as well in
importance.  It is authenticated work, full of meaning if it is used or reinserted back into the language of the children.  If it reflects their interests and lives then it is a powerful tool to have as it enables them to
spell phonetically more independently. 

 Unfortunately from what I am seeing, the theory is not always being applied in a meaningful way.  I have seen books been given to us that map out these skills for the year in a sequence.  You spend so much time on each part.  There were some good points in there but it does not fit with our current understanding of the construction model and how young children are busy constructing their own unique language systems.   I would hate to see children having to drill through each  activity to reach a point at the end of the year that most children reach in  a few months without much help. Spending 3 weeks on finding a hidden clock by using your ears to hear the ticking does not quite equate to listening to the language and its sounds.
      There is still the chicken or egg question here too.    Is it the skills that make them good readers or do they have these skills because they are good readers or because they are ready to be good readers?  When it comes to any literacy skill and I am repeating this - I look at 'the skills' in much the same way I see Reggio teachers loaning or supporting skills in clay, paint etc. They loan the tools and the understanding or expertise and let the children explore, create and solve problems.  Phonemic Awareness is just another 'tool' to support, loan, and learn to make sense of that helps children make better use of their language in their own terms.

September Wrap-Up:

I am going to wrap up my direction.  I have begun to realize what I have been doing with the children.  I always have reasons for doing things with them but I have begun to consciously see this.  I wrote in the beginning of the year about how  I set up my classroom environment to support the language and other learning that I wanted to occur in the classroom.   In the same way I came to realize, I have given the children some tools that I now want them to 'play' with.  I guess if I use the analogy of kindergarten builds the foundation for learning I am always hearing about, I have provided the children with a few nails, some tools and perhaps even some wood.  It is not much to start with but there it is.  My literacy foundation consists right now of their names, our written poems, our sentence on the board  I see ________, hi _________. , the period the comma, these numbers- 0,1,2,3,4,5,   these letters h,i,s,e, and these words  hi, see, I, stop. These words are appearing on their stories and they are using them in their messages to each other.  One of my students wrote STOP _J_____________.  He made sure he pointed out both the word stop, his name and the stop sign- period.  This is the raw material that has generated in our class.  

Now I am going to let the children play and construct with it.  I am not going to rush on as if I had some kind of curriculum time clock to punch in everyday and zoom on by shoving more and more material at the children because I have to cover the curriculum as is happening in my son's math 30 class.  I believe that students now need time to reflect, create, and construct their own learning.  They can play with these tools, use them for their own  purposes, and make meaning from them.  I can use the word cards now to extend that to key words for some of the children.  At Canadian tire you can buy a utility box for $13.00 or so full of 24 drawers, I think. I am going to label each  drawer with a child's name and keep key words in it.  Old ones will go into their folders, common ones in a file box, and current ones will be in the box. I will try this organization and let you know how it works out.  I will pull those children who need a little more one on one work to encourage them.  I got some advice if a child says "I can't" I am going to try pretend you can.  

So for this week those are my plans to work on and encourage the construction of the learning using these tools and any other significant thing that comes up.  We will search for shapes, weave wheat, work on shape pictures and continue the exploration of art drawing materials using and creating images of just lines and shapes.  These do not frighten the children into having to produce some kind of end product.   Last Thursday and Friday things were the same except we added the working with a recipe as the children 'read' through it to make whole grain tea biscuits. We sang Biscuits in the Oven Going To Watch Them Rise and danced to Oats, and Beans, and Barley grows.   We talked some of wheat and harvest.  The
wheat center will be added in the PM class.  The AM farm equipment starts on Monday.  Wheat can be grown, drawn, and woven.  I begin soaking the stems tomorrow.  

Professional Reflection on Reggio List Serve:

This is not my post but I was wondering if I could possibly share some of the pressure that has been coming my way since Adams book was published and this interest in the rebirth of phonemic awareness etc. - which was never intended to be just a repeat of the old phonic worksheet. 

     I did read the book and am willing to accept some points.  One, that yes phonemic awareness is important for children to have. I mean by phonemic awareness that children can differentiate or hear the separate sounds in a word.  I could sound out cat or stretch the sounds out and they would be able to tell me the word cat.  Or conversely they say cat and they are able to split out the sounds and hear the phonemes (which are still somewhat
distorted sounds).  This is not phonics in the true sense as there is no pairing of the sound with the letter.  I am saying this so there will not be a misunderstanding of my understanding of the term.
     I believe this skill is used mostly through writing and spelling although then it is paired with the letter representation phonics).  The skill can be looked at as one tool a child can benefit from among many that can be used first in a writing context and then as a reading strategy - would the word that made sense here start like this one does? or this could have been frog but it starts with a "B" sound. These skills often have to be taught directly or implicitly. Children who have this skill make for better writers/readers is the conclusion.  The process must still be stressed and the writing and reading process modelled.
     The up side is that it encourages teachers to start with the more active activity of writing verses reading only and begin both early skills together via key words or whatever. The idea is that the little they know in writing helps support and adds to the little they know in reading which adds and supports the little they know in writing.  Thus we see the reciprocity of both (Marie Clay's word) -one must consider conversations and ideas too.
      Children struggle with the writing making more sense of the letters and sounds as they use this skill for their own purposes and interests. Poems, rhymes, rhythm, onsets and rimes also come in here as well in importance.  It is authenticated work, full of meaning if it is used or reinserted back into the language of the children.  If it reflects their interests and lives then it is a powerful tool to have as it enables them to spell phonetically more independently.
     Unfortunately from what I am seeing, the theory is not always being applied in a meaningful way.  I have seen books been given to us that map out these skills for the year in a sequence.  You spend so much time on each part.  There were some good points in there but it does not fit with our current understanding of the construction model and how young children are busy constructing their own unique language systems.   I would hate to see children having to drill through each  activity to reach a point at the end of the year that most children reach in  a few months without much help.  Spending 3 weeks on finding a hidden clock by using your ears to hear the ticking does not quite equate to listening to the language and its sounds.
       There is still the chicken or egg question here too.    Is it the skills that make them good readers or do they have these skills because they are good readers or because they are ready to be good readers?  When it comes to any literacy skill and I am repeating this - I look at 'the skills' in much the same way I see Reggio teachers loaning or supporting skills in clay, paint etc. They loan the tools and the understanding or expertise and let the children explore, create and solve problems.  Phonemic Awareness is just another 'tool' to support, loan, and learn to make sense of that helps children make better use of their language in their own terms. 

September 27, 2000

I did the usual intro today, plus our song Thanks A Lot.  The children came in and sorted shapes by color today. This took some thought on their part to figure out my rule.  We did not do a story today in the AM but did Color Zoo in the PM for another look at shapes.  I did my guess my message with both groups and left the board for the children to add too.  One child did this during center time and wrote I see ________ Hi  _________.  He made sure he had his stop sign the yield sign comma was skipped but we did not miss it. When forming this sentence he had to struggle with exactly where the word boundaries were.  What word did say see and is this I? he asked me.  It was a good discovery for him and one that will need to happen over and over again.  That is why I do like to see the children writing.  It forces them to pay attention to things and experiment with new concepts.  Before center time in the AM the children had to go to tables.  They could play with the felt board with the old woman who swallowed the fly, write, work with words letters  etc.  For 10 minutes I let them do this before opening up all the centers.  I am doing this on non- workshop days (writing) as it will fit into literacy centers later.  Two other children made messages for the others which I read before home time.  One was STOP ___________,  the other was I see ___________.  This was good practice for them and the nice part was the student receiving the message could read it.  The child's name was copied from the pictures with the names on it at the writing center.  I
asked other children about the light tower they built the other day and had them try to draw a picture of the tower.  Then I wrote down their stories. The children worked with a parent helper today AM on their Red Light, Red Light poems.  They add the lights after cutting them out and then share read the poem.  This poem will go into their scrapbooks but another copy will go
home for share reading at the end of the week.  I worked on the What Did You See?  Books.  

The PM class acted out the poem Shapes twice before going home.  I had them all write their names on a sheet of paper for Sept.  They will do this through the year in a different rectangular section through the year to note improvements.  This sheet also goes into their scrapbooks. Also each morning I spell out the children's names 2 of them that are my
attendance helpers.  I say Give me an H,  give me an a etc.  give me Hanna etc.  They will know the names by the end of the year.  I did not get to sock and chalk today.  I will have that as a center once I go through it with them.  Their welcome pictures are done.  They consist of a photo of the child, their self-portrait, and a photo of their family, plus a write-up of what they told me about their families and how they are special.  For the Logos program it was God made me special etc.  These stay up on the door all year and then go into their scrapbooks at he end of the year.  They are more personal for the children.  The treasure boxes continue to come in with the children's stories. 

September 26, 2000

I am bound to keep this one short.  Today I introduced my sentences I see ________,hi _______.  The children could read them and the child would usually recognize at least their names.  The numbers did not do as well as I forgot one key ingredient- model first and then have them do it with you. For as many years as I have been teaching why do I forget that at the beginning I have to go all the way back to the modeling part.  You think I would know this by now!!!!!!!  Tomorrow or Thursday I will do it better.  We talked about harvest and wheat, we are cooking this week.  We did a new song for Thanksgiving  by Raffi  Thanks A Lot.   I need to teach this for a performance for our Logos celebration in 2 weeks.  It is slow and I think
somewhat hard to learn.  I will play it in the background as the children play.  We will have to learn a poem as well.  I did have to explain the, today as I used it.  I tied it into the yield sign the children know about. A kind of pause without really stopping, I can maybe breathe here thing. They are going to think print is nothing but traffic signs.  I found a Sunshine reader called Storm that has I  see  rain,  I see clouds,  I see lightening ...  I read to them and said this is a book they could read  I see in.  Also  Have You Seen MY Cat by Eric Carle.  There is also another Scholastic reader with an Under This there is a line that ends in Hello, worm.  I blanked out the hello and put in Hi.  We will look at this in small groups for fun later on.  I want them to see a word they should recognize in a book.  I put out small chalk boards for tomorrow and a box with the words HI,  SEE, STOP, I  written in capitals on top for writing if they prefer them and lower case letters for reading underneath or later in the year.  I told them that they would find the lower case letters in books and that the upper case are there in case they want to write the word and find these letters easier to make. I leave it for their choice.  I am still not sure about this but I find that they do begin to use lower case letters through the year, no one being the same.    We did a dance to Oats and Beans and Barley Grow - that was an impromptu as the children wanted to listen to this number that came after Thanks A Lot on the tape.  That was at the end of the day.    We acted out our shapes poem. 

September 25, 2000

My two classes are not going to be the same in that sense of the word and doing 2 separate entities is hard.  So I will combine some things when possible and separate when I must.  My morning session this morning was longer.  My morning managed my PM wondered if it was play time and as soon as they wonder that of course it is.  I placed the little Sunshine Readers out to look at this morning.  I will begin with these readers and allow them to go home in their book bags soon.  I brought in my socks for sock and chalk work, for those children I have identified as needing work on their names and pencil pen grips.  I will pass out those wonderful grips, the ones that are marked with the L and R for handedness and help them to choose these instruments when they are writing.

I began with the reading of the Monday morning news (connecting home to school) and then 5 fat peas, and 1,2 Buckle My Shoe,  shape names, poem and I held up a variety of different plastic shapes that the children identified.  We did the  Brown Bear book for the pattern What Did You See? I reviewed sight words and letters we knew and then I introduced our word for the weeks ahead.  I chose this one because we will be working on our book What Did You See? this week as well.  So I wrote S  E  E  and explained how to form each letter and introduced the baby of each family or lower case letter and we drew in the air.  Then I made up I see (name of child)______, hi ________. That they could read and actually write now. Tomorrow I will have several of these on the board for writer's workshop and they can discover that they can now write a message especially considering their names are all over the room.  I also reviewed the numbers and told them we would be learning two more and they asked for them so I gave them -  around a tree, around a tree, that's the way to make a three.  Down and across and down once more, that's the way to make a four.  I modeled these, they practiced and went to centers. 

During center time we worked on the What Did You See? books.  There are only two pages.  Basically the front reads  _______, ___________ What Did You See?  and the inside two pages I saw _________________.  The child tells me something they saw this summer or lately or whatever and then I give them the word to copy from a sheet going over the letters and sounds as I write the word.  They copy this , I give them the word to copy in capital letters but I write the word in lower case letters underneath because this is what it will look like in a book you may be reading.  They then draw a picture using our colored pencils today.  They do the second sheet and I then share read and underline the print as I go.  I make sure to point out I and see and I ask them if they remembered their period or stop sign.  We are
connecting to what they heard and making it relevant in their work.  The love doing the periods and will say things like Oh I need my stop sign, etc.  These go home for homework as they will read them to their parents and hopefully hang on to them and leave them by their bedside.  I send a note to parents about this. 

We end with songs stop, look etc. and Eensy Weensy Spider and Eric Carle's The Birthday Surprise where again we reviewed the shapes. 

PM went somewhat similarly except I did not introduce the numbers to them. We had a new Rainbow Fish project to start.  The school has worked on the Rainbow Fish (I teach in two separate schools) as a school theme for the month of Sept.  It is not one of my favorite books and I have not devoted much time to it.  But the children liked it so I decided to do something rainbow fish-ish.  I set up a counting fish corner and there are fish in the water table and today I put out a large sheet of white paper and I taped it to the art