Follow Their Lead!

¡Buenas tardes, y bienvenidos a las conferencias!

I have to say, I am pretty proud of my accomplishments today: successful conferences, homework for my Educational Research course, lesson planning, and making biscuits!

Knock wood, but I think I've got a bastante padre lesson in science on Monday planned for my administrative observation. Our inaugural classroom use of our new toaster oven will be for baking biscuits with visual recipes. Of course, there will be compare/contrast science journaling of the masa and the bizcochos, ingredient reading, and math measurement!

I've got a few minutes before my last conference comes, and then it's off to our Dual Language PLC, so I thought to write up a post about following children's leads. This is a key concept in Early Childhood circles - in its fuller form it's known as emergent curriculum - but it's often neglected in elementary pedagogy (at least as far as I've witnessed) due to the chock-full schedules and standardized assessment. Ironically, the very thing that typically makes research so simple - technology - is the also the delimiting factor. But even if you can't plan a whole unit around the whims and whimsies of your kids, small, impromptu investigations are absolutely possible (and necessary).

Here are three from the last few days: 

1. Sledding.
I have a new student. He just moved from El Salvador; his first days in this country have been snowy and relentlessly cold. Of course, his first day in my class he was crying and crying and crying. He wanted his mom. Claro que quería estar con su mamá. When we went out for morning recess, he shivered and sniffled, totally miserable in his puff coat and adorable penguin hat. My words comforted him only a small measure.

Then, my kids discovered that the snow on the small playground hill was packed down and slick with ice. It was approximately 45 seconds before they were all tobogganing down on bellies and backs and bums, shrieking and having a grand old time. My new student watched, then got close. Then he smiled. Then he rolled down the hill with them. When they asked if they could have a few more minutes outside, my answer was an enthusiastic "¡Sí!"

2. "¡Igual que Bella!"
Later that same day, it was storytime. The past two days we had read Cross-Country Cat. It's about a Siamese cat, Henry, who realizes to find his family he must travel by... that's right. Cross-country skiing. It's totally winning (and a childhood favorite of mine). So, to extend on a theme but also practice with informational texts, we read a (super-abridged) article that I adapted from the New York Times. It tells the story of Holly, the amazing kitty who traveled more than 200 miles to reunite with her humans.

 

 We read it, with kids tracking the text. It was the first time I had tried an article of that size, and was pleasantly surprised with how kids used the pronouns and the number to find their place when they would go too quickly or slowly. 

When they finished, a student piped up: "¡Igual que Bella!" she said. I thought I had misheard her. Surely she meant Henry? But others nodded, their hands shooting into the air. "Yeah, Bella!"

Now, I could've easily rerouted the conversation to comparing Holly and Henry. Instead, I followed their lead. In a minute I was on the computer connected to the SmartBoard, loading the preview for A Dog's Way Home. 

 

 

  Well, look at that.
Kids, animated by their text-to-experience connections, chimed in, and soon we were comparing Henry, Holly, and Bella. There was even a fervent sidebar that discussed whether A Dog's Way Home was fiction like Cross-Country Cat or non-fiction like "Holly Vuelve a Casa" (they decided that it was almost non-fiction, but since Bella talked it was fiction).


3. Reading music.
Then, just yesterday, kids were interested in the weird markings next to "Music class" on our daily schedule (musical notations).  I explained that they were music notes, and that you could read them just as you read in English or Spanish. I sang the little phrase on the daily schedule. They were perplexed. We had to push on at that moment, but I explained I'd do a mini-lesson on reading music later during play for those who were interested.
And that we did. They picked the song, I tracked the music, and it wasn't long until they had popped in the CD and grabbed percussion instruments.

I know we all follow our students' lead; I know too we sometimes feel like we have curtail their wild, anarchic curiosity in favor of scope and sequence. But, for your sake and for theirs, give yourself permission to explore with them. Who knows where it may lead you? ...It may lead me to go see a cheesy kid's movie about a dog. After all, as a student pointed out, I could probably ask my mamá or papá to take me.  ;)

A Brief Treatise on Kínder Classroom Libraries

Hello y buenas tardes, dear lectores!

It's been far too long - and in the interim, I've moved jobs AND schools! I am writing you as a proud 50:50 Dual Language Kínder teacher, instructing half my day en español and half in English (más o menos). At a semester in, I can say with confidence that this was the right choice for me professionally and personally. Perhaps I'll tackle my motives in another post... but for now, please allow me to show you my classroom library. It is, quite simply, my organizational pride and joy.

 There it is! (This picture is from the beginning of November: now my book stands have El Gorro de Lana, Owl Moon, Coming on Home Soon, and Dos Lobos Blancos)

Let me walk you through the process:

First off, my dear friend and colleague helped me haul my approximately 450 books in our two tiny cars. (This is not even mentioning the other carloads of games, instruments, supplies, and manipulatives I dragged to my new school.)

At the preschool, I had been proud of my extensive library, but had only had out 30-40 books at a time - largely thematically-based. That was what my three-year-olds could handle; and thus it was easy to maintain order, as I was the only person who accessed my complete library.

For kindergarten, however, I knew I was going to have to create an organizational system that five-year-olds could learn and maintain.

A couple weeks before the school began, then, I headed to Lakeshore. Fortunately, they were having a container sale. Instead of grabbing their (more expensive and smaller) book boxes, I got 24 general storage containers in red, yellow, green, and blue. 

Back at the ranch at my new school, my friend and I dumped all the books out on my circle rug. We sorted and sorted and sorted, developing categories along the way and organizing based on each category's size. I typed them up and put them in a new tab in my Reading Strategies Google Spreadsheet. The verdict:

The books were in and categorized! But how to keep them that way?

I had an idea! It took my (saintly) EA the better part of a day to do it, but here's what each text in my library (save for oversize and class sets) has on its inside cover:

Each text has, in its upper left-hand corner, a stamp. I had it personalized to say:

Este libro pertenece 

a la biblioteca de

la Maestra Alix.

¡Leer es liberación!

(Freire, eat your heart out!)

For translanguaging ease, red is English in my classroom, blue is Spanish. If it's bilingual? You got it: purple. So, this particular book is in English.

Now, you'll note that there is also a colored sticker on the lower right-hand corner. It's yellow, and it's got a 4. So... Yes! You're right. It goes in the Yellow 4 bin and is therefore a Social Story. (This particular, wonderful book is The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson. I dare you to read it without crying.)

I was thrilled beyond belief when my kiddos, on their first day of kindergarten, were able to understand and utilize the library properly. As we've gone on, we've added our reading buddies (stuffed animals), a book hospital (for broken or ripped books), and our book bags.

The last item was inspired by this awesome blogger. Instead of using the (kind of expensive) cardboard book boxes she advocates, I used the same idea but got canvas bags - one per student. Students decorated them, and they use them to store the books they'd like to continue to read from day to day. They also have a "I can read" Ziploc bag inside their canvas bag, which is still just a letter list (I highlight the letter when they learn it) for most students, but has some BR texts for my higher readers.

(If you don't know La Viejecita que no le tenía miedo a nada... you MUST!)

¡Y ya! ¡Qué fácil! I mean, just kidding. It was a huge amount of work. But do trust me on this: it has been worth every moment of effort.

Coming soon: (hopefully) a post about how I incorporate all of this into my daily Reading Workshop, and also a post about crafting my read aloud curriculum for the semester. Also, of course I'll try to get an Historias del Juego post in soon - ¡don't think for a second my kids don't get to play every day in kínder!

¡Colorín colorado, este post se ha acabado!