Yesterday during morning meeting I commented on how well the kids have done with learning the alphabet. “That was your job this year, and you did it!” Then a very serious boy raised his hand and said, “did we do all that stuff up there?” “What stuff,
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The New York Times reported sad news this morning. Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are and many other children’s classics, died at the age of 83. I love his books, and have long admired him. As the Times said, In book after book, Mr.
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The Container Store is having a 20% off sale for teachers, through May 31. If you sign up here for their Organized Teacher discount program, you will qualify for the discount. It’s probably worth doing; the Container Store has great stuff, and most of
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Two of my new students are now gone, just like that. To be honest, my life is easier without them, but still. ARGH. Why would you put your child in a preschool class for a month, and then pull him/her out without even saying goodbye? One family pulled
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Not too long ago, the letter of the week was Q. I introduced it, and then demonstrated how to write it on my big chart paper. First I wrote capital Q correctly, a few times, and then I showed how to write lowercase q. “Now I’m going to write it the wrong
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I believe that I am a very good teacher, and that classroom management (behavior, organization, community-building, routines, etc.) is one of my strengths. And that is largely true. I start off the year by teaching the children all of our routines, hold
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I haven’t posted much lately. I think it’s because usually my posts about my year and my class tell a story, and this year, the narrative keeps getting botched up. Three years in a row I had an awesome class. Last year’s bunch mostly had two parents at
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….to be getting new students. One little boy started a few weeks ago, and this is his first experience in school. He is doing pretty well, actually. He learned how to walk in a line, how to sit in the meeting area, and how to keep his hands to himself,
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Yesterday our bus driver, an immigrant man who is great with the kids and delightful to talk to each day, reported that on Thursday, when he got to my new student’s stop, there was no one there to collect him. The bus driver waited for ten minutes until
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This month our theme is Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, and we are concentrating on one story per week. Last week’s story was “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” and this week’s was “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” A few lessons learned and observations noted:
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Yesterday was another hard day. Our one child is in a tailspin, presumably because things are very bad at home, and brings to our peaceful little classroom a tornado of terror, rage, and stress. The three adults are barely coping, and it feels terrible.
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We made the heart handprints, and they turned out wonderfully. We started making them on Monday, but even the ones we did Tuesday dried quickly enough to be able to write down the children’s quotes for their mothers, and send them home that day. I used
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One of my friends came to school yesterday, limping heavily. She explained, “I was bad, so Daddy punched me in the leg.” My assistant teacher, who was the one who greeted our friend off the bus, said later that she nearly threw up, right then and there.
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Today we went to the auditorium with the whole school for an assembly about Black History Month. The featured speaker was wonderful, but his words went over the heads of my small ones. Nonetheless, they were very patient and good, and they enjoyed the
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I originally found this on Pinterest, from this blog . Isn’t that sweet? We will start Monday, if we have time. I suppose it has to be done in three steps — the pink heart handprint, then when that dries, the red heart handprint, and then when that dries,
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