week 1

Take that back…15 first grade and 4 second…but Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I had another teacher. Willeke took the first grade and asked if I would do the second grade at the back of the room. No problem…so the schedule: assembly with the whole school lined up on the concrete of the playground, then to our classrooms where we did a song, bible story, and calendar together. After that we did our separate things…spelling, math, language and it went ok but that classroom was so loud…even when they were listening to you and they were quiet the other grade was chanting or reciting…and with the concrete surroundings…well you can imagine. We let them go out for break and Willeke and I had a brainstorm of moving me into the last room of the second block which will be storage or admin or something but right now was an empty room with a chalkboard… perfect. So I moved my 4 students in there and was amazed at the difference…there were actually moments of quiet (granted not many but still)

Wednesday and Thursday went the same with the bible story and morning song together with first grade and then we went to our separate classroom and worked on our spelling (add, live, puff, well, doll, kiss, miss, will, you, egg) math (addition, days of the week, left and right) language (sentences, vocabulary) and reading. The last half hour of the day we would rejoin the first grade for a story…this week was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (what I used to think was a very good, nice story but now see it as quite sad—boy taking taking taking and never giving back).

Wednesday afternoon we moved classes (again) the kindergarten and first grade made a switch. As the doorways were at opposite ends of the building and our door was right next to the kindergarten door we realized that when it becomes a split class or has only one teacher it would be very helpful to have them in the rooms with adjacent doorways… desks are heavy and not fun to move but we got it done (I’d say I was in a pretty icky mood by the end as I was hungry and getting cranky) and it really did confuse the kids the next morning!