Dear Collaborators,
It has been only two days that I have been with my new teaching partner and new students in my new school, but the memories are already so rich and intricate. Memory comes in part from dynamic surprise leading to further development. When routines set in very deeply and things happen the same way at the same time all the time, it is easy to forget what we have experienced. What did you eat for breakfast 5, 6, and 7 days ago? I personally, could not tell you want I ate. We don't want our lessons to be too much like this in school, either for teachers or students, or we forget too much.
I was not expecting to teach right away. I told my partner that I could just observe at first, but as our friendly trust and rapport had already been established, it was easy to jump right in and teach half the class. There are really two groups, 1st grade and the older kids with no one in the middle, so the class divides into two very naturally. We switched back and forth very easily, with me teaching both English and Math to both younger and older children.
I have an ever evolving plan in my mind as to how I want to teach both English and Math to children at different levels. I think about it all the time, but I don't need to have a specific lesson plan for a specific time. All I really need are resources at hand (paper, crayons, computers or anything) and opportunities. When I suddenly got to start teaching English to the older kids, I followed a combination of Lindamood-Bell reading instruction methodology and the Tony Buzan Mind Map system to start moving the older kids forward.
I want to teach "open syllable" phonetics first. What this means is that I want to teach students one syllable words that start with a consonant and end in a vowel that pronounces the name of the vowel. Lindamood-Bell advocates teaching students nonsense words at first mixed with real words to strengthen the concept of rules and reduce the risk of only memorizing known, teacher-defined vocabulary. Therefor, after reviewing the 5 basic English vowels and their name-sounds, I wrote all the consonants on the board. I had the students practice adding each vowel to all the consonants like this:
ba, ca, da, fa, ga, ha, ja, ka, la, ma, na, pa... etc.
Then we talked about the real words and helper vowel patterns:
bay, day, hay, lay, may, pay... etc.
Learning was fairly successful on Monday and the students remembered about 35-50% of their new English vocabulary words on Tuesday. I gave them tons of words all at once, so I was happy with the result. However, it highlighted a problem that created a little healthy tension and discomfort for both me and the students. There were many words they did not remember! This is good because in nearly every human story or narrative we usually get to face a problem before finding out what the resolution of that problem is. It creates emotional drive for a solution. This will help me teach the older kids about basic memory arts tomorrow so we can start creating active imaginative associations in Spanish together that will help them remember 90-100% of the words I flood them with next time.
With the first grade, we are dancing faster and faster around our letters and numbers. We do intellectually focus problem solving exercises, associative art to deepen our memorization of form and meaning and out door large scale physical reinforcement activities. I have these 3 kids of tasks clearly defined in my mind, but I don't know how much of each activity I am going to give the students each day. I constantly gage their energy and mood. I push them to do as much focused hard intellectual work with paper and pencil as I can get away with, but when I see them slowing down and running out of motivation I switch them over to art or physical exercise with letters, language and numbers to both deepen their memories and recharge their emotional motivation.
Most of the time I feel like a happy coach pushing my athletes gently but gingerly along toward there best, but suddenly having one new first grader who was far behind the others I have taught this year in number knowledge almost knocked me off my game today. My partner teacher saved the day however! This was the student who I wrote about coaching on the meaning of life at the end of the day today in my "Meaning of Life" posting earlier today. Today's success would not have been possible for me with out early intensive support from my Costa Rican teaching partner.
In the morning after realizing our first grade boy didn't know all of his numbers between 1 and 9, I went outside with the first grade and created a kind of box hopping game up a ramp with all of our colored numbers written in colored crayon in very large sizes on the concrete. The first grade girls took turns as teachers, and at one point our boy finally got up and down the number line naming all the numbers successfully. Then the other teacher came over to see what we were doing, and our student suddenly forgot what the numbers were counting and jumping down the ramp on the numbered squares. I was suddenly so disappointed, I almost let it show. The other teacher read this on my face immediately and instant jumped with a wave of encouragement highlighting all the progress the student had made and reinforcing his identity as a successful learning. You are an angel! I thought when I saw the other teacher jump with this support. I am so glad I am working with this partner.
Now at home tonight, I am watching the beginning of an approximately 18 hour Stanford University lecture on the history and structure of the English language. I know approximately what I want to teach the students in English, but it always helps to learn more about the history of English spelling as I face teaching all these difficult things to my dear students. As a good side effect of this work, I also experienced how hard it is to go through a full hour of the lecture without a break from the intense and purely analytical right-brain work. I like all of this stuff, but truly, it can get very tiring. Being a life long student always continuing to learn is some times better lesson preparation than direct lesson planning in this way. Anything that deepens my empathy for and understanding of what my students are experiences helps me to keep them motivated and doing there best.
I think I am going to need some drawing breaks as I work through this lecture too! Luckily I just bought a book on how to make fast and efficient sketches of many different kinds of animals. This skill is in high demand with my first graders these days! They want alligators, bears, cats, and dogs to color in after doing a bunch of writing work with letters like A, B, C, and D! May the fun continue.
Love to all,
Sky
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