Well, today was a pretty hectic day in some areas, but it was also a pretty productive day in other areas.

I’ll begin with the former. One child had a really tough day due to one instance that he could not put behind him. Here’s the scenario: It’s ELT time, around 10:00, my mentor teacher is speaking with another student, I am on the other side of the room helping another student, and then I hear something along the lines of, “John Doe, go pull your red strip,” the child then raises voice to teacher in a fairly disrespectful manner. I then also hear, “and pull a green strip for being disrespectful.” I have never seen a fifth grader shut down or cry so much. I can’t say it was because the teacher was too stern or unfair at all, but perhaps the child is use to getting his way or is worried about punishment at home. A little later that day during the science lesson, the child tried to plead his case to the teacher, and the teacher told him that it wasn’t a good time and he should come talk at a more appropriate time when a lesson is not in progress. The child shut down and began to cry again. When it was time to pack up and get ready to leave, I was in charge of signing agendas, where the color of the strips children had to pull is indicated. Unfortunately, this sent him into his final spiral. After I signed his agenda, he began to plead his case to me. I tried to sympathize with him, and then tell him to, if there’s a next time he has to pull a strip, accept it for the time being and wait for a good time to discuss the situation with the teacher.  This was not what he wanted to hear so the crying continued all the way to the bus. It ended up being about a 5 minute walk for him and me to walk about ninety yards down the hall…

On a positive note, again dealing with classroom and hallway management, the class made some positive strides today.  For one, transitions were addressed again today. After a noisy first transition, the teacher set up a system on the board (pretty much a 3 strikes deal), where if the kids couldn’t transition quietly and quickly, they would spend recess time practicing. While my mentor teacher was addressing transitions, he went ahead and addressed hallway behavior, setting up the same system. I don’t really care for recess time being taken away, but it seems to be the most popular leverage for many teachers. However, I will say the transitions and hallway behavior for the rest of the day were the best so far. Let’s hope the system and behaviors can remain consistent.

Another positive for today was reading and writing time. During reading, the children were learning the job of “vocabulary enricher” for when we begin reading groups. The teacher read a chapter from, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to the class and they were to list unfamiliar words and the page numbers they were on. After reading, children shared their words with the class, and we all went back to the page and used context clues to figure out their meanings. This was a positive experience because the children were all pretty excited to find out what their words meant, and asked if they could do that for extra reading homework tonight (along with a request for a bonus, but hey, it’s a step forward).

In writing, the children were given time to work on a “Challenge Piece,” where they were given three images the day before, and they are challenged to create an imaginative narrative connecting ideas inspired from the three pictures. The children, my mentor, and I, were so into the writing, all you could hear were sniffs, coughs, and pencil on paper. This is not an extended piece, but just an exercise for practicing generating ideas, but I am excited to see what they have come up with when they publish by Friday!