Today I had my first day of school. From 8-12 I teach pre-k (age 4). It's definitely a challenge to keep them occupied for four hours. Four year olds can't stay concentrated on one task for any longer than 10-15 minutes, so we have A LOT of moving around. Everything feels a little chaotic because my student teaching was second graders who were used to school already.
What makes it even more difficult is that all of my students are ESL. My Spanish is for sure helping me, but not all of my students speak Spanish either. I have a little girl who just moved here from India, she speaks Hindi. The chaos of having 4 year olds in classroom and everyone speaking a combination of three languages is interesting.
Currently, I'm just trying to establish a routine. My routine looks something like this: coming in to coloring in the morning, then circle time, calendar, outside/PE, snack, letter of the week work, read aloud, centers, home. I'm sure that once students understand the routine they will begin to pick up more English. It is also difficult for them because, as our director said, they have been speaking Spanish/other languages all summer and it's been two months since they've used their English.
In the afternoons I teach writing. I had all my classes write me a letter telling me about themselves. I told them they could ask me questions and I'd write back to them. I'm hoping to keep this going all year so that the students are encouraged to write more and can see the use and value of writing. For my 5th graders (They learn descriptive writing) I read them part of Harry Potter where there are dragons described in detail. I then had them write a description of a made up creature and switch papers with a friend. Their friend had to try and draw the creature from the description. It was funny to see how when there wasn't enough description the other person couldn't draw the creature and it led into a good discussion on the importance of writing descriptively. For my 3rd and 4th graders (who are learning narrative writing) I made them each choose three different colored blocks. I had a chart so that each color corresponded to a person, place and thing. So, depending on what colors they chose, they all had different characters, settings and objects to write a story from.The kids thought it was hilarious because they'd end up with with a combination of Justin Beiber, China and super hero; or Harry Potter, Anaco and banana; or Selena Gomez, Canada and guitar.
Overall, it was a tiring but good day. Looking forward to tomorrow.
What makes it even more difficult is that all of my students are ESL. My Spanish is for sure helping me, but not all of my students speak Spanish either. I have a little girl who just moved here from India, she speaks Hindi. The chaos of having 4 year olds in classroom and everyone speaking a combination of three languages is interesting.
Currently, I'm just trying to establish a routine. My routine looks something like this: coming in to coloring in the morning, then circle time, calendar, outside/PE, snack, letter of the week work, read aloud, centers, home. I'm sure that once students understand the routine they will begin to pick up more English. It is also difficult for them because, as our director said, they have been speaking Spanish/other languages all summer and it's been two months since they've used their English.
In the afternoons I teach writing. I had all my classes write me a letter telling me about themselves. I told them they could ask me questions and I'd write back to them. I'm hoping to keep this going all year so that the students are encouraged to write more and can see the use and value of writing. For my 5th graders (They learn descriptive writing) I read them part of Harry Potter where there are dragons described in detail. I then had them write a description of a made up creature and switch papers with a friend. Their friend had to try and draw the creature from the description. It was funny to see how when there wasn't enough description the other person couldn't draw the creature and it led into a good discussion on the importance of writing descriptively. For my 3rd and 4th graders (who are learning narrative writing) I made them each choose three different colored blocks. I had a chart so that each color corresponded to a person, place and thing. So, depending on what colors they chose, they all had different characters, settings and objects to write a story from.The kids thought it was hilarious because they'd end up with with a combination of Justin Beiber, China and super hero; or Harry Potter, Anaco and banana; or Selena Gomez, Canada and guitar.
Overall, it was a tiring but good day. Looking forward to tomorrow.
My classroom all set up. Except those aren't my real tables, they're temporary until my circle tables come back. (Lucky I had tables, some classrooms didn't have any...)
5 out of my 7 students. 2 weren't here today, I was told this was normal, that when kids are young the parents often continue vacation a little longer than usual.
Oh you are so lucky, look at those little cuties!
ReplyDeleteYes! They are very cute! Can't wait until their English improves/they start learning English. =)
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