Week Four

    One of my favorite activities with Pre-k students was our apple week. We sorted apples, tasted apples, diagrammed apple parts, read apple books, graphed favorite apples, and cooked with apples. The experience immersed all the students' senses and built an excitement that I am sure many of them feel each time they smell homemade applesauce. For me, the smell of apples and cinnamon take me back to one brave little boy who was likely to have a spectrum disorder. He told me all week that he did not like apples and that, on Friday, he would not try the applesauce. I told him that was fine but always encouraged him to take part in anything he would willingly do. Friday came, and he came over when I was handing out applesauce cups. I asked if he had decided to try it. He said yes but that he wanted me to give him a bite. I got a spoon of applesauce and held it for him to move his mouth to. To both my and his surprise, he actually put the whole bite in his mouth and tried to swallow it. The texture got to him then, and I quickly handed him a paper towel to spit the applesauce in. Instead of being upset with him, my paraprofessional and I just hugged him and celebrated his bravery and willingness to try a new food. I will never forget him telling his mom, "I was BRAVE today! But I was right. Applesauce is gross and warm, and I spit it out." She, too, praised his bravery for trying a new and different food.

    Fast forward to Kindergarten where I had looped the next year with eight of twenty-two students from the year before. We were having the time of our lives. It was my best two years of teaching before this year. The relationships were deep, the structure high, and the memories made one year carried over to the next. The students would always relate discussions of books right back to the year before of other books we read together or math problems back to a math game we played in Pre-K. A group of teachers visited to observe my class that year and asked me in the debrief how we got all those students identified as gifted before Kindergarten. Since that was not the case, I asked why they thought that all the students were gifted. It turned out that the high level discussions and questioning within partner discussions were beyond the expectation for five to six year olds.

    I reminisce on those years not to brag about anything I did but to relate to this week's reading. I did not realize how noteworthy the level of discussion actually was until it was pointed out by a visitor. It was an expectation which I had carefully crafted as a norm in my classroom because I believed in the value of discussion to work with and process information. I never took for granted that my students knew how to discuss, agree, disagree, or build on ideas. I spent time planning, organizing, supporting, preparing, and modeling high level discussions with my students in all size groups from whole group to partnerships. My paraprofessional and I created anchor charts to support the memory of sentence stems students should use. We crafted questions to guide discussions on a regular basis for almost every concept we covered in any content area. Turn-and-talk was a preferred active engagement during any mini-lesson. 

    Beyond questioning and giving students opportunities for high order thinking through collaboration with peers, one reason my students were so successful the year I looped with them was that we had a whole year of common background to base instruction in and to build upon. My knowledge of what students like and connect with was rich due to our prior year together. We had a multitude of shared experiences that naturally served as connections before any new material.  Their learning was tremendously relevant and connected to prior knowledge.

    All of this leads me to hope and high expectations for the coming school year where I will loop with many of my sixty-five students from this year as I move to seventh grade with them. A focus and priority for me will be building from our shared year-long background and existing relationships in order to make learning relevant as I select books for class reading and set goals for students' metacognitive skills to build upon their previous year. One thing is for certain: they won't be the only ones learning every single day!