August

It's been a while since I've posted anything, but the internet here has been troublesome the past few days. (No surprise there). Everything has been good though, for those wondering. Nothing too exciting since I'm just getting back into the swing of being back in school. Last weekend all of us went out to the Hole in the Wall for some drinks. It was a thoroughly fun night. I'm glad the group this year likes to go out and take advantage of the few places that exist in Anaco. As much as I love going to the beach house, it's just not something that's feasible every weekend when I have work and grad school, so it's nice to have people to go out with locally, too.

The kids have been great. They seem to have grown up so much. What they're capable of is much different then last year, and kids who were very difficult last year have improved. I love that I already know these children because I definitely can pick out the strengths and weaknesses of each child only three weeks into school. Having this knowledge of my students already is going to help me significantly in planning effective and interesting units for them. They're starting to adjust to the full day much better, but by the end they just can't sit still. They start looking around, tipping chairs, drumming the cable and humming to themselves somewhere around 1:30. We're doing a lot but it's definitely better to explain via cute kid pictures.

First, it's most fun to take pictures of the kids when they're doing art. It's kind of boring to take pictures of some other lessons, but art is always a good time. I have to teach art twice a week. One day I'm using art to actually teach some art concept, and the other day I'm using to relate to an author student or content area. On the art concept day we're learning what a silhouette is and some different ways to make them. Mainly because I like sunsets and they lend themselves to blending colors and making a mess. =)

Marian, Dominick and Hakim painting sunsets.

Marcel working on his sunset.

Painted sunsets with the black silhouettes cut out of paper and glued on.

Art work hanging in the classroom.

Closeup. Middle one is my quick drawing/demonstration obviously. =)

One style with tempra paint and silhouette cut out of black paper and one style of oil pastel black silhouettes and watercolor back ground to learn about resistance. 

The other kind of art we've been working on relates to our Eric Carle author study. Each week we read a new Eric Carle book and do some art relating to the book we read. I'm building up to truly imitating Eric Carle's art style, but at the moment we're just doing one or two parts of our painting in his style. It takes kids a long time to paint and entire paper, wait for it to dry, then cut out pictures from that paper. The art is looking pretty good so far. We've read "10 Little Rubber Ducks" and "Slowly Slowly Slowly said the sloth."

10 Little Rubber Duck painting. Each child chose a different sea animal that their rubber duck went past.

Cutting the leaves out of the painted green paper for "slowly slowly slowly said the sloth."

Cutting leaves and grass.

Marian is REALLY concentrating on correctly drawing her hummingbird.

In language arts kids have started learning their sight words. I've began calling them popcorn words because they "pop" up everywhere. To make practicing them fun I printed out and laminated Iphones that they can write on and erase. They get to write and "type" their sight words on the Iphones for practice. We're also reinforcing letter sounds. Each time I introduce a letter I have a projectable read aloud book that uses that letter a lot throughout the story. The kids get to come up and use a cool pointer to search for the words that begin with the letter we're learning. When they tap the board with the pointer, I highlight the word they found. They like this kind of "I Spy" game. 

Carol practicing writing on the iPhone.

Marcel "typing" his sight words

We also have some bean bags which the kids are allowed to read and look at books on. They love them.

Dominick searching out the words in our projectable story.

Everyone intently trying to help search for words on the screen. They were at their tables, but they got so into it that they moved all their seats as close to the screen as they could.

That's about it for now. Obviously, everything's going pretty well and I'm enjoying being back. Hopefully soon I'll have something a little more interesting to post about. But for now, no news is good news and since everyone is already familiar with my kids and Anaco in general through my posts last year, there's nothing really good to write about.

Open House

Right now I'm in my classroom getting ready for open house to begin. Elementary open house is only an hour long and most parents have to meet with more than one teacher because they have multiple children in grades pre-school through fifth. There is also Middle and High School open house starting at 7, so parents then have to go there. Parents here are also notoriously late for everything, so I assume my 20 minute blocks will already be cut short, people will wander in and out as they please and everyone will ask me questions again tomorrow anyway.

School has been going pretty well, though today was filled with poor listening and some children getting in quite a bit of trouble with the P.E. teacher. There were time outs, and tears, and notes sent home. I do feel that the P.E. teacher does not know how to handle younger children and this is a large part of the problem, but when he gives me a bad report, it is my job to keep it from happening again.

Other than that, we've just been starting "serious" school and getting into our routine. The kids are definitely used to the full day, some even wanting to stay longer. =) We've been language arts instruction following the reading a-z program. (The school doesn't have any set program, its up to me to decide how to teach it) I chose this program because it has "decodable" books. These books begin very simply and tell a story using only 3 sight words and words made from 3 letters. They are stories kids can sound out. Each week, we gain another letter or two and two-three more sight words and another new book to read. This is great for the kids because these books they can begin to read and gain confidence with what they are doing. I think that children learn to read, not from memorizing sounds and spellings, but from practicing. So, I really enjoy that this program lets them start reading right from the start.

In math, we're still largely reviewing, but spending lots of time perfecting our teen numbers. We're also learning place value on a very basic level by making groups of ten, then figuring out what number blocks we have to add to get the teen number we want. I am hoping that this will really improve children's number sense for the rest of the year and when they get older.

Science and social studies are still just learning rules and routines more than anything, but its a lesson that is greatly needed, especially at this age.

I don't have much else to talk about besides school at the moment since that's about all that's occupying my time and nothing too exciting is happening in Anaco. There is still shortages of things though, but not so bad. I also found almost everything that is shortages here in Puerto La Cruz last weekend, so maybe Anaco will get toilet paper back soon... Just in case, Dereek and I ordered a whole bunch from some friends in Margarita. It is now in Puerto La Cruz and we may take a day trip up there for the beach and to pick up our toilet paper. I'm starting to run low and that is NOT something you want to run out of.

***Now that Open House is over and its 24 hours, I have LOTS to write about, but I may keep things vague because I do not know exactly who may find my personal blog that is meant for my family and friends at home. That being said, during Open House I got an absurd amount of questions about curriculums spanning multiple countries. I got criticized for our schedule repeating some things that we did in pre-school. Despite explaining that things are repeated because we must assume kindergarteners come in with the most minimal knowledge and this has to be accessible to EVERYONE and that center time in the afternoon is my time to work individually (or in small groups) with kids on individual needs, the matter was continuously pressed. I also had parents comparing younger siblings to older siblings, despite the fact that these are different children and they will progress at different rates and find different strengths and weaknesses just as my own sister and I (and all other siblings) have. I also got critiqued about how I would improve a students art, despite not being an art teacher and fully admitting that I, myself, am not artistic. The art is typical kindergarten art. I thought putting their adorable, painstakingly created "self-portraits" out at Open House would be a cute keepsake for parents so they would be able to show them to their kids when they're older and say to them "look at what you thought you looked like in kindergarten" and have a good laugh; apparently they just spurred questions about what I was teaching... I also got told that a child whom I had taught last year didn't get into an international school in Mexico and felt very much accused that this was my fault. So... all that being said, it was kind of stressful, especially considering we are NOT EVEN TWO WEEKS into KINDERGARTEN.

After all this, I decided to talk to my director this morning about what he thought. He was very reassuring and assured me I am an excellent teacher, that all my kids who have left for other schools have ended up getting into excellent other schools, that if we both stay next year he completely trusts his son to be in my class, and various other things that made me feel much better. He also told me that any problem that has to do with curriculum should be sent to straight to him since I don't decide the curriculum, I just teach it; which is great to hear that some of these issues can just be deflected onto him.

I had a lovely day with my children today though despite everything. They are all great kids and I really enjoy the class I have. They all have their own individual talents and I am really enjoying seeing how they are turning into a little family after being together for so long. I am trying my best not to let anything that was said get to me, because I know parents who change countries every couple of years will naturally worry if their kid will be okay in a school in another country, but it was just a rough way to start. I felt like I wasn't even given the chance to do my job and critiqued on things that I don't control. Sorry to all for such a long post. If you actually got through this whole thing I'll give you a gold star when I get home.

First Week of School

So the first week of school is officially over, and the second starts tomorrow. Kindergarten is definitely one of the more exhausting grades I've taught. Older kids are used to being in school for the full day, and preschool children go home at noon. Kindergarteners are still adjusting to the full day, and, especially at the beginning, have a preschool mindset making the full day exceptionally difficult for them. I've also found that this grade is so exhausting, because here we have to supervise our children at lunch and parents are very adamant about their children eating all their food. I spend my entire lunch period, policing my kids to make sure they eat enough, this also leads to me not getting to eat my own lunch very often... Hopefully this will get easier later in the year when the kids are used to eating on their own.

School has been going well though. The kids seem happy and I'm proud at how much they remember from last year. I'm also excited to have Casian as my assistant in the afternoon. She is great with the kids and it'll be good to let her work individually with the children who need a little extra help. I also have 7 kids in my class (though Marcel hasn't come back yet because he had had eye surgery over the summer) which is a great number. Not too many, not too few.

We've mostly been reviewing information, playing educational games, using play dough, practicing our handwriting, and talking about the rules and expectations of a kindergartener.

This weekend was nice. I went to the beach yesterday with Andreina and we met the other new teachers  (J, Shannon, Matt and Morley) at the beach house. They were overwhelmed with new things so they just wanted to hang there instead of going to an island. Maybe next weekend we can go. I think they'll be really excited when they see how nice the Mochima National Park islands are. Since we didn't go yesterday we spent the day just sitting on the beach near the beach house and swimming while drinking beer and eating chips and avocado. It was a relaxing day. Andreina and I got lucky and Patria was in Puerto La Cruz, so we met her at Puerta Real, had dinner and she drove us back home.

A crazy thing happened while at the beach though. We were sitting on the sand then we suddenly hear a boom, look over, and see a huge fire and lots of smoke. Apparently a boat had caught on fire somehow. There was a decent amount of fire and a lot of smoke. It was on the other side of the canal so no one our beach could do anything but watch. Hopefully everything is okay. I'm looking to see if theres any small news stories on it. Currently the news here is more focused on an explosion at the oil refinery in Puerto La Cruz that happened a few days ago when lightening hit the refinery. No one was injured but it was big. Here's the story about it and a picture Oil Refinery Explosion

Overall its been a good start to being back and I've been enjoying my time here. Off to go finish laundry and get some school stuff done for tomorrow.

Carol using play dough

Hakim made a weight out of play dough

For art we made self portraits

Marian practicing her hand writing

The fire at the beach in Puerto

Lots of smoke.

First Day of Kindergarten

Today was the first day of kindergarten. It went pretty well, nothing too exciting. I have a total of 7 kids in my class this year, only 5 were here today. Hopefully all will be here soon so that I can get a class picture from the beginning of the year. The morning went very well, the kids are so much more capable of focusing and working through the morning then they were last year. We didn't take a break to go outside at all before lunch (though they did have PE). After lunch though the kids had Spanish and by the time they came back to me they were shot. They all were just dragging and seemed so tired. I suppose a full day is exhausting for them when they're this little. I was proud that everyone made it through the entire day though without tears or asking when we were going home or anything like that.

I have an assistant this year in the afternoons, so it will be a huge help to have her in here with myself and the kids. Even with a small class, when they are all ESL some of them need some extra reinforcing of ideas, which is what I will have her doing in the afternoon once we get farther.

I wish I had more to say, but I have some work to do for this week, and I'd like to get out and run so I'm making this a quick post, but here are some pictures of the classroom and my kids on their first day.

This is my classroom all set up.

View of the calendar and morning message section

The section with class jobs

Closer view of class jobs

I have these cute owl (which is my theme this year) signs with their table numbers hanging over them.

The reading corner with huge bean bag chairs and those are painted bulletin boards. Still thinking what I'll put on them.

The class working hard. They had a much more productive morning than afternoon.

Looking at books on bean bag chairs during SSR

Working on decorating our Bucket Filler and Bucket Dipper posters

Carol's first day of kindergarten.

Dominick's first day of kindergarten. Dominick is my new student, his dad is a teacher from New Jersey and his English is perfect which is great. I have one of these pictures for each of my students.



Back in Venezuela for Year Two!

Obviously I have arrived safely, which just about everyone already knows. It was a pretty painless trip. Long, but no problems whatsoever which was great. We got back to Anaco fairly late on Friday night, at least in comparison to the time I left that morning.

I've pretty much spent the weekend with Dereek grocery shopping and getting the house in order again. I did come back to no hot water which was really frustrating, but that was easily resolved. They forgot to plug in the hot water heater to my house. Dereek and I went out for dinner on Saturday night which was nice. It was good to see familiar faces. Afterwards we went back to my house and Matt (one of the new teachers and a fellow Bucknellian) came over and we had a few drinks and chatted. Sunday was equally uneventful with a trip to the market and lots of unpacking. Dereek and I did get to go back to our usual Sunday night dinner though!

Today was the first day of "work," though it was pretty relaxed since half of the teachers aren't here yet. Marcelo didn't want to start formal orientation until everyone came. It worked well for me though since I got the entire day to set up my classroom. I have some cosmetic stuff to do, but it's just about done. Thanks Heather for leaving everything so organized so I had such an easy time setting up!!! Here's just a couple pictures of what my new kindergarten classroom is looking like. Keep in mind its not done yet so excuse the lack of color...

Classroom view from the entrance

Classroom view from my desk

Sight word word wall

Calendar area