Character Voices

One of my favorite student made birthday cards given to me a few years ago said the following:
"Dear Mrs. MacLeod,
I love when you read to us using special voices!"

Reading aloud to my students is one of my favorite things, and using special voices for each character has been something I have worked hard to develop over the years. 

Today one of my students pointed out that my special voices are what makes listening to stories so much fun. She loves it. And I was about to read a book by one of my favorite authors: Mo Willems.
There is a Bird on Your Head!

The Elephant and Piggie books are especially fun to read out loud because in most books they are the only two characters (so I only have to master two voices), and there are lots of engaging emotions in these books. 
As I read today, this same student who mentioned my special voices pointed out the two times when I made a mistake in the inflection. It was the funniest thing! My students are clearly spoiled as I reread the line that she told me I said incorrectly. 

We read another great book today during which there were howls of laughter as the main character, Beatrice, outsmarted the Giant. I highly recommend it!

Good Communication... A Learned Skill

Good communication is definitely a learned skill... as seen through the writing of a first grade student:

This comes directly from a note written to a best friend. I will omit names for protective purposes.

You are the best! You are kind to me. You can be a little unkind. But I like you still! Best friends forever! Love.

Then again, there is a refreshing genuineness in this note. 

Profound Thoughts in First Grade

Last year because I was a first year teacher I was always nervous that I was going to offend a parent if I allowed certain discussions to occur. This year I have grown more comfortable in my teaching style and with discussion, so we've had lots of great Biblically based discussions. My main goal this year has been to teach the truth of God's word and the grace of who He is so that students can have a better understanding of the world in which we live.

This plays out in two ways in my classroom:
1. We are having more discussions on what the Bible stories actually mean, and the characters in the Bible. We talk about the things they did wrong and the things they did well. We talk about what we can learn from them constantly. Last year I just avoided discussing the negative things about Bible characters. But the Bible has many flawed characters, and they can teach us valuable lessons as well.

This brings up my favorite prayer that was spoken in the walls of my classroom just yesterday afternoon. We have been praying for a certain student's grandmother who is in the hospital. This was one student's prayer, "I pray that her grandma won't be scared like an Israelite, but that she would be like David."

2. The second way that this plays out in my classroom is that we talk about the hard stuff in a first grade appropriate way.
Today when I was reading a Max Lucado book that includes many great stories, the topic of divorce was mentioned in the very beginning of a story. I think this was the first time I actually said the word divorce this year.
This topic first came up when I was retelling the story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel. The look on the kids faces when I mentioned Jacob's extra seven years that he was going to work for Rachel was confusion because he was already married to Leah. So I stopped and I reminded them that God is perfect, and when he created marriage he created it to be between one man and one woman. Then I reminded them that we live in a broken world where people steal, kill, break the 7th commandment, and sin. I love to explain it as the brokenness of man and not of God, and then I love to point out that God is SO GRACIOUS to man! So that's what we discussed in September.
When I said divorce today, a child blurted out, "What's divorce?"
I took a deep breath.
And a student decided to explain it before I even had a chance. They shared, "It's when two parents fight and argue so much that they have to live in separate houses so that they won't argue anymore."
I reminded them this is not how God designed marriage to be, but He gives so much grace. And divorce can be hard, but God will always provide great comfort and strength!

I'm learning so much! I am getting a little glimpse into my inadequacies and spending more time asking the Lord for wisdom in how to teach and instruct these little ones. I hope that it's okay that I've shared this here. It is not intended to offend, but to tell you what I'm learning in first grade. :-)

Poetry & Song

Two of my favorite ideas that we are doing this year in first grade are to incorporate Poetry and Songs into our classrooms. We got the idea from Debbie Miller's book Reading with Meaning, and many of our resources come from both of Maria Walther's books- Reading Instruction for the Differentiated Classroom and Month-By-Month Trait-Based Writing Instruction.

I was disappointed to discover last year that my students did not know the Mother Goose poems. These were little poems that I grew up knowing such as "Old Mother Hubbard", "Little Bo Peep", "Humpty-Dumpty" and other classics. So this summer, my co-teacher and I planned to bring this in to first grade.

The greatest asset about using poetry in my classroom culture is that the children memorize so many poems, and then when they look inside their specially made poetry binders, they can practice saying and reading them while pointing to the words. It's a great way to indirectly get them to learn new vocabulary and thus improve their reading.

I love finding poems that relate with the current units we've been studying.

The songs that we are learning have been numerous and fun. We've learned songs like "Frere Jacques", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho", "Kookaburra", and so many more. These are fantastic to use during transition times. I start the song, and the students join in singing. By the time we're done with the song, they need to be ready to learn. I have copies of the songs in bins at each of the tables, and students are allowed to practice reading these as well. Why is this valuable? *Ding *Ding *Ding. This is another valuable source of indirect vocabulary instruction!

Renovating Basal Readers

When I was a child in first grade, teachers used things called Basal Readers to teach reading to children. These were thick textbooks with collections of popular children's books all assembled inside. We would turn to the same page and the teacher would have students volunteer to read each page outloud, and then he/she would guide us through the questions at the end of the story and that was what we did for Reading time.

In my classroom today I teach reading by sharing a story aloud as well as teaching a specific word family or phonemic idea. I have easy books, medium level books and hard books, and I differentiate by putting my students into a book that suites their specific needs. It has been said that this is a much more effective way of teaching reading than using the "old" basal readers.

What should I do with all of those old basal readers in my cabinet? By the way, they still have wonderful stories assembled inside of them, and these stories are still relevant, but I can't teach each student the old dis-engaged way of how I learned to read because this generation needs more hands-on experience in books.

I got the following idea from a good friend and previous classroom teacher. I cut off the covers on some old basal readers and used the binder combs to assemble each story into a book. I have dozens of books ready for my students to read. 

 

One of the students that read one of these books actually thought I had written it because of the binder combs. These books are just as great as the books in our library, but they are also easier to send home because if they get ruined, I don't even have to worry about them. I have so many, and I didn't spend lots of money buying nice hard copy books to send home.

I love that some of them include skill pages to give the child something to do with their mom and dad when they are reading it at home.

The other thing that I do with "old" basal readers is that I send them home with my good readers that need more practice with fluency because they can keep them for a few weeks and practice reading and re-reading the stories to ramp up their fluency and reading voice. 

Challenged and Refreshed!

Over the past few weeks, I have just felt busy and a little bit drained of my fiery passion as I felt bombarded with paperwork and keeping track of student assessments, as well as pleasing the parents, and making sure my room is clean. I could keep going, but you get the idea. It's easy to get lost under the pile of things to do.

These past two days I have been encouraged and refreshed attending the Nexus ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) sponsered conference. Our school had a live satellite video that showed the event taking place in real time. It was an encouragement to be challenged from the Word of God. I was reminded to think back to the time that I was first called by the Lord to go into teaching. I was encouraged to give my best in the classroom, and focus on continually speaking the Word of God on a daily basis... and even before I had time to reflect today, I was encouraged by a woman I don't even know in the ladies' bathroom today. She encouraged me to share my ideas, even though I explained to her how I often feel too new to give anything to the field of teaching. She encouraged me to take the time now to blog and share my ideas with teachers who are stuck in the staleness that may come with years and years of teaching the same grade.

I will have you know that I always view seasoned teachers with admiration, and I desire to soak up everything they can share. I am humbled by their expertise. 

And the truth is, I'm not afraid to share my ideas, I just don't think that they're always worth sharing. But who am I to judge? I have a rhyme and reason that I do the things that I do. So going forward, I will try to share the little things that make my classroom special and the things that I do with intention to inspire others. Please know I do this with the most humility. I know that I have so much to learn.

Suz

IT'S CHESTER!!!

It's Chester!!!

Chester is one of our favorite characters. We have read all three books written by Melanie Watt- oops, I mean Chester! You'll have to check these stories out if you haven't read them. This cat is quite the comedian and has a precious mouse sidekick to add to the appeal. Ever since we have read these stories, the students quote Chester constantly. 

So I have reasoned with my students previously that I can't possibly be the one painting the characters onto the desk because I'm not a good artist.

Well... this is how one child's logic worked as he tried to crack me.

Student: Mrs. MacLeod, I think you're the one painting the desk.
Me: Really? Well, it can't be me because I'm not a good artist.
Student: Well, actually the characters aren't really that good. I see smudges, so I don't think it could be the real authors sneaking in here... I mean, they don't look exactly like the book characters.
Me: Oh Really? (with a big grin)

I will make a general announcement soon that I'm the artist, but until then the logic of my students has been quite amusing.