I Want to Be Kind
I rarely leave kindergarten without a story to tell about the events that happened while I was there. The story I am about to relate is probably my favorite one from the whole year.
I taught my normal lesson, and at some point during the time, I needed children to pull out a glue stick. It rarely fails that at least one child is without a glue stick when I ask them to pull one out. When one child let me know he didn’t have a glue stick another child readily volunteered his. I spoke to the one who lent the glue stick and said, “Thank you Johnny for being kind.” Immediately after this tears erupted from close by. Why the tears, you ask? The tears were accompanied by these words. ” I wanted to be kind…I wanted to be kind.”
I love the rawness of kindergarten–raw emotion. There is no holding back as with adults or grown up children. In fact, I think most adult behaviors could be explained with a trip to kindergarten.
In all honesty, don’t we all want to be recognized for being kind? In many cases, we as adults aren’t kind because it helps someone or because it is the right thing to do. We do it because in our pride we selfishly want accolades for our kindness.
Make Kids Cheer About Trash!
This was probably one of the best projects we did this year. My students made amazing U.S. landmarks from recycled items. Part of the challenge was to include a circuit that lit up. Students accomplished this with Christmas lights. Even if they didn’t bring their project to completion, all students gained more understanding of the landmark they studied and where it was located on a map. In the current educational world where social studies time is lacking, I am grateful for their learning. See some of their work below.
What’s a State Blitz and Should You Be Having One?
This little adventure began with me asking students if they could name the capitol of their state when I by happenstance was watching a classroom for a few minutes while the teacher stepped out. Do you know I called on seven….SEVEN…children before one could identify the capitol of their own state. The children I asked were of the age that they should have known this. Further, I work in a good school! They all lived in the capitol to make matters worse. Before you develop an inflated view of the school you teach in, I challenge you to pose the same question to your students to see what they say.
After asking children this question, I was prompted to do a Geography Bee. Too, this supported the teachers who are teaching an exhaustive reading curriculum with very little time to teach science or social studies. Round one was to name all of the states. Only one student out of 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade was able to accomplish this. Less than 10 students named 40 or more states. Now for the whopper–more than 30% of students weren’t able to identify their own state on a U.S. map!! Could this be happening where you live, too?!
As a result, I borrowed some older children the last few days of school to do a blitz of our state all over the building. I had 40 state cut out-outs, and about 20 maps. Then I had children color them on a U.S. map. My helpers were so cunning that they even plastered a few outside the school building! See some examples below so that you can maybe make your very own state blitz.
Side note: I also love this video which shows the 50 states while they are highlighted during the song.
Does Your School Have a Social Studies Crisis?
Does your school have a social studies crisis? Or your district? I really don’t think it is just my school. I believe it is a mindset in education. Teach children to read for the whole day, and squeeze in an hour of math. If you have time maybe you can throw in science and social studies once a week for 30 minutes.
This is typical and explains why when I walked into a room, no one could tell me the capitol of their state. Disheartened, I left the room. After some thought, I decided to do a geography bee with all the intermediate grades. Round 1 was to name every state. VERY few could do this. This showed me that many of our students don’t even. know the very state they should call home. Do your students know their states? If not, Super Teacher Worksheets is a great place to stop for these resources! I used their numbered map below for my round 1 and gave students other maps to study for preparation….but hey…maybe your students know ALL of their states.
Giveaway Time!
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Co-hosts: An Apple for the Teacher,
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Are YOU ready…Freddy?
Every time I enter a K-2 classroom to teach enrichment, I bring Freddy. Freddy is one of my classroom management posters. I bought some clipart and added a “Ready” title to the bottom of this page. The “Freddy” part kind of evolved with the children’s input. What is great about Freddy is that he looks exactly like I want the children to look when I am teaching. At the beginning of the year, we talk about what it looks like to listen and pay attention. Then as I am teaching, I walk around with Freddy and point to him when I see children not acting appropriately. Freddy and his friends are in page protectors in a binder that I carry with me when I am teaching an enrichment class, which lasts about 30-40 minutes.
Freddy has friends, too. With the children’s help I also have named a “Ready Betty”. As time has progressed, Freddy has made friends and I have included them in the binder, too. In addition, I have included a “lip sandwich” poster. I must give credit to a teacher friend for a lip sandwich idea. We discuss what a lip sandwich is at the beginning of the year so that children know the expectation. More than anything, showing them what Ready Freddy looks like gets results whether on the carpet in “criss cross applesauce” style or when children are at their seat. My principal even noticed how effective the posters were and commented on this, and I have had teachers ask their students to get in the Ready Freddy position.
Sometimes I am able to make a story about how Freddy is watching the children and I cover my eyes for five seconds and count and say that I know they will be ready when I open my eyes. I have also told children that Freddy is friends with Elf or Santa at Christmas. There are a myriad of fun imaginative stories you can make up where Freddy is involved especially since children thrive on imagination.
Here is the poster set I made for use at my school. There are most multicultural groups represented in this set.
What Will Become of Our Children?
I am starting to see my students grow up. At times they wait on me in a grocery store or they are a waiter etc. Looking at the struggles our current students are having in school and the push of education in a direction that leaves out common sense concerns me.
- I had a cashier struggle to count a mix of bills at the checkout. I mean maybe he was stressed from the long line and thereby flustered, but maybe not. With the dependence on a debit card, will children be able to count money? It seems at least in my district that the money standards are pushed all the way to the end of the year. We all know what happens when a topic is pushed to the end…it often gets left out.
- I teach some of the brightest students, yet some struggled to tell time. Is this becoming the norm? I had a teacher friend tell me that her grown daughter has to think a minute when looking at an analog clock. The school secretary mentioned that a parent couldn’t tell time from the analog clock in the office. Has our dependence on the digital clock on the cell phone crimped our brain?
- I am all about critical thinking and math, but I am hearing teachers comment that children in grades 3-5 struggle with multiplication facts. The leaders of the math department are insisting that it is okay that children arrive at the answer by reasoning from a known fact. That is great that children can do that…but what happens with just knowing it in a second is important. Clogging up your brain with reasoning to get to the answer slows down your reasoning when you arrive at more difficult problems.
- This one is unrelated to math. Has Google broken our critical thinking minds? Please say it isn’t so! I assigned a research project recently about planets. I asked some questions such as what kind of clothing would you need on this planet? What kind of food would you need? I had a child tell me they would bring Sonic and hibachi. I asked them if they thought there were drive thru windows in space and if that would sustain them for the years that it would take them to travel to their planet. I had children literally type these questions in on Google expecting that the answer would be there. In other words, they didn’t think I was going to make them think. I gave them a lecture about how Google doesn’t know everything, and that I expected them to reason about the questions.
Maybe I just needed to rant about these things, but I really am quite concerned. Public education needs an overhaul of common sense, but these are areas (especially the research one I am going to work on with my students).
Below are some resources to teach time, money, and multiplication.
Happy 2022!
Happy New Year 2022 from teacherblog.co!
