We received a twenty third student today. The student is not new to our school, but this is the first time he has been there this year. The most important lesson I learned today is that one can make a difference. Nothing bad happened today, but it’s easy to see the wheels turning for some drama. The kid has done nothing wrong and seems like a pretty nice guy. Where the potential problem lies is the influence he has. He seems to be pretty popular with the rest of the class. So, it didn’t take long to see some of the girls become a little flirty and some of the other guys trying to act too cool for school to impress him. I believe we will be working hard to engage our new student because, if he does have some pull with some of the others, we can hopefully turn this into a positive instead of a negative. I really hope to have him in my reading group because we have all been really open about our ideas and have enjoyed it. I think if he can take an active role in my reading group, it could translate into the classroom where everyone can be influenced.
On another note, we did an activity in writing that I really enjoyed. The focus was “organizing your ideas.” The lead teacher gave an overview of four common ways writers order their writing: time, space, perspective, and content. After doing think-pair-share to discuss what each was in their own words, the children wrote on a post-it which way they like or think they are best. We all then posted our note on the board in the particular category, and told the class why we chose that category. This gave the kids an opportunity to thing about which organizational approach may be best for them, and we all got a better understanding of what each approach means when we explain why we chose a certain strategy.
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