With our ongoing work with sight words, we added a new literacy choice; sight word building in the loft! This is fun and important work, but it became even more important when I offered blank composition notebooks for children to record their sight words in. There was a lot of excitement about having their own composition notebook. We remembered that any word important to us can be a sight word and children eagerly built and recorded an assortment of words they know.
This week children continued to add to our Westford School Tracking Map. Some of the scientists made their own tracking books using small stamps and copies of our identification sheet. I offered the copies as another way to label their tracks; you can write the name of the animal, draw a picture, or find the picture of the animal and cut it out.
On Friday we happily welcomed Gabbi into our classroom as another teacher and support. I mentioned my hopes for offering other ways for children to tie knots. Gabbi and I discussed having a "How To Tie Your Shoes" group during academic choice and she quickly made a sign.
With her knowledge of younger peers and love for teaching and learning, Gabbi engaged two of the Kindergarteners in a hands on step-by-step process; just like we have been learning about during our procedural writing unit! What an authentic opportunity for an older peer to be a mentor.
We love having Gabbi in our classroom!
Perhaps one of my favorite moments this week was another ordinary- yet extraordinary- moment. Children want to help. They recognize that our classroom is their space, their work, their labels, and their materials. There is a lot of prep work (beyond teaching plans) that goes into everyday; ensuring that we have enough copies of writing paper and blank books, that all materials are replenished, prompts and invitations are presented, documentation is updated, pencils are sharpened and whiteboards are cleaned. The list gets long fast. But, I have to remember that part of the children's ownership of their learning and our classroom is taking on some of that list.
I offered small classroom jobs as one of our academic choices and children eagerly asked to help. This week, we had pencil sharpening. Once this choice was presented children began to notice other jobs that they could help with. Dylan offered to clean our whiteboards at the beginning of choice on Thursday. He spent most of his choice spraying and scrubbing 18 whiteboards.
We can learn a lot about helping and community from the children we work with, we just have to let go and listen. I'm thankful for what they have taught me about offering to help and working together to take care of our classroom. As I look at my list this weekend I am using a different lens; What from this list could children take ownership of during our academic choice? What jobs could they help with to prepare for our experiences?
No comments:
Post a Comment