I am really enjoying my class; although, the exhaustion is setting in. Keeping up with 22 first graders is difficult, especially at this time of year. I love all their little personalities and it's funny how I can almost get a glimpse of the people they will be when they grow up. This year, I have a lot of helpers and I mean that in a really good way. I was having trouble with a student playing in the bathroom. He was our bathroom buddy, but wasn't doing the best job, so I fired him and explained to the class that it was important to do a good job and that I needed to trust them. The boy didn't seem to phased by the loss of the job, and the student who replaced him was so excited that he kept asking if he would still have the job the next day. I love the enthusiasm. Anyway, back to my helpers. One boy had noticed that "A" kept playing in the bathroom, so he offered to watch him and to make sure that he didn't play. This student reported back to me at the end of every recess today to tell me that "A" didn't play. This is not something that I taught, but I think that the students can tell that I want them to help each other and of course they get lots of praise from me when they do something nice.
The funniest thing that I heard today was a conversation that took place after reading the poem, "Hey Diddle, Diddle." We were talking about the illustrations and one student asked why the cow had a space suit on. I briefly talked about how there isn't any air in space and that without air, we would die. All of a sudden I hear, "like Michael Jackson" and then another student says, "No, he got too many drugs," while another said, "No, he had a heart attack." I wanted to laugh, but I was also amazed that 6 year-olds were having such an adult conversation. And it's not like that's a recent news story. I just love what goes on in their heads and what they choose to share with the class.
The week is going by quickly, which is a good thing. I spent most of Friday, Monday, and Tuesday giving CELDT tests, which were not measuring language ability AT ALL!!! It took about 45 minutes to administer the test to each student and I had 11 to give. So, most of my class got busy work, while I focused on giving the test one-on-one. And what is more frustrating is that the test is meant to find out the English proficiency of Spanish speaking students, but asks students, who have not learned to read or write, to do just that. I wish that I could have taken a picture of the looks that some of the students gave me when I asked them to write their answers. They did the best that they could, but, in my opinion, it was a total waste of instruction time. One student even asked when we would go back to our regular routine (the one we only had for 4 days)!
Well, it was back to business as usual and they fell back into it much easier than I had anticipated.
No comments:
Post a Comment