Adventures 'beyond' the classroom

"I want to go ask one of the bigger kids to read this to me," C declared today.

"One of the kindergartners?" I clarified, then set her up with a visitor's badge and sent her (and the book she wouldn't let go of) off to the other classroom. Now C isn't overly shy, but I've yet to know her to walk into the other classroom without some sort of back-up--much less talk to someone over there. But as I peeked in after her I saw her standing confidently next to the teachers assistant, waiting patiently for her turn to talk.

So when she still wasn't back in a couple of minutes I got concerned and peeked in again. C was still standing by the assistant as yet another kindergartner said that they were busy. The assistant teacher kind of looked around and I had the feeling she'd already gone through the entire list of children who could read and had come up empty. So it was on to phase 2!

"Is everyone busy? How about we go and ask one of the elementary students instead?"

So that's what we did. C was definitely more nervous going in to the 'really big kids' classroom, but she followed me in and was just ecstatic when one of the first graders agreed to come over as soon as she finished cleaning up her painting. 5 minutes later the two of them were camped out back in the 'safety' of our classroom, reading the puppy story together.

At this rate if I'm not careful I'm going to have to worry about which classroom my students are spending most of their time in!

Building Community

The preschool years are when the child begins to awaken to the community beyond their family unit. They're ready to begin making real friends and exploring new places. My little class has long ago accepted each other as a part of their new community, you can tell by how comfortable they are around each other and aware they are.

It's not uncommon for them to notice when a child does not come to school, asking my where so and so is. Or if another child leaves for the bathroom they're apt to notice and wonder aloud where they are. None are shy about asking anyone else for help, nor are they are afraid to say no to someone (well...M's still working on this occasionally). 

So I've begun throwing some new things in to the mix. The other children's house in our school is fully established in that it has the full three year span of children (unlike our new class that is just growing with younger children). Many of the kindergarten children in the other class are becoming fluent readers and so myself and the other teacher have been encouraging them to come over and read to the children in my class. 

It's actually quite entertaining how shy these 'big' kids can suddenly become when they enter another room; even if it's only filled with people they know! We had quite a few of these visitors today, and I tried to make sure I modeled greeting them warmly and making them feel welcome. I helped direct them to a specific child who wasn't working and would probably like to hear a story (luckily all my children said 'yes' when asked). I had them pull out our special reading mat (Thanks mom!) and stayed out of the way while the visiting kindergartner read at lighting speed before popping up to leave. I made sure I thanked them for reading to us and encouraged them to come back again if they'd like. Hopefully this modeling will rub off on my students and they'll pick up on doing it themselves soon.

The books that take less than 1 minute to read ;)

As an adult it was a pretty funny situation to witness. Children who know they don't really have any reason to be nervous try to pretend they're not, and then leaving as soon as possible; elated and relieved at the same time. Meanwhile my students were quite happy to sit down and listen to the stories, though I could tell they were a bit confused when the kindergartners kind of hid behind their book rather than showing the pictures like they're used to when I read. And then when the older student would leave (usually after only a minute or two since the books are pretty short), there would be this little pause as my children seemed to be thinking "That was it? Huh what do I do now..."

So that's our first real step to building up a bigger community. By welcoming 'strangers' in to an environment where my students are comfortable it gives them a chance to learn some of the social graces associated with visitors before they become a visitor themselves. Now I just need to find more excuses for them to visit the other classroom.....

Language is ridiculous

What's harder than learning to read?

Learning to read when the book you want to read is about pirates...pirates who speak piratese.

While practicing reading with a first year elementary students today I had to pronouce and explain the following words:

-Aye!
-Lubber
-doth
-thy

And a mix of more that I can't remember. Then we got to the part that stumped her cold. She sounded it out, hesitated, looked at it again and looked up at me.

"Um..."

"Yep, that's what it says.It's in the book. Go ahead."

"Shut up," she read again, hurriedly skipping away from the bad words and racing onward. Oh the perils of reading, the world opens!

In over their heads

Usually there's a lot of success stories over the course of the day, but coupled with those has to be some stumbling.

Story 1: Too much work

M and M decided that they wanted to do "Big" addition. Guess they were really inspired by the one we did in the afternoon last week. They spent a good twenty minutes trying to recruit another friend to work with them since doing addition with the golden beads works best with three people; two to add their numbers together and a third to be sort of in charge and help get the counting done. After failing to find a third they were still inspired enough to set it up for just two children with me giving them the numbers to collect. They gathered their cards and beads with just a little difficulty and then got stuck. This whole thing took about half an hour and when I noticed both of them just wandering around, occasionally returning to their mat I had to step in and ask what step they were on. I reminded them to set out the big set of cards and left them at it, hoping it would spur their memory of how to finish up the activity.

No such luck. By this point they were still a little fuzzy on what to do, add that to the fact that they were tired from working on this one project for about 45 minutes But they pulled it together, finished the work and without a second thought began cleaning up. I wish they could have done it completely on their own, but on the other hand I didn't want them to get frustrated or bored so much they didn't want to ever do it again. Oh well, better luck next time.

Story 2: Toy temptations

This story happened in the afternoon, when only the oldest children are in the classroom. E and A had the farm out, one of the most coveted and anticipated materials in the classroom. The farm is just what it sounds like, a play farm. It is used in the classroom to teach the parts of speech (noun, adjective, etc.) and isn't introduced until children can read fairly well. Of course all the younger children recognize the fun animals that go with it and want to play with them. Even the older children can get distracted from the reading by the temptation to play with the animals.

So when I heard E telling A about how 'super pig needs to be here to he can tell all the other pigs what to do,' I went over and reminded them they needed to finish setting up the farm animals so they could label them. They buckled down for a little bit, but not long after I noticed they were simply arranging the animals in a tight circle. I asked E to come and read some of his book to me, telling A she could arrange the animals while waiting for her turn to read. Usually things get less silly if there's only one child but still they couldn't get those animals arranged. They were just too tempting. I could tell that E and A both knew they weren't using the farm like they should have though, because as soon as I said they needed to put it away since they weren't using the labels they complied without a single complaint. Sigh, well at least they knew what they were supposed to be doing.

Story 3: You can't read with hands in your eyes

Reading is hard. And it's even harder when you're struggling with it and you really want to do it, but you can't, and all your friends have read the books you're still struggling through, but you still can't make out the words, and you just can't stand to look at the words on the page anymore and your eyes hurt from it.

Yeah, I think that sums up the frustration A was feeling this afternoon. She has such a hard time remembering what sounds the letters make that reading is nearly impossible for her. Sounding out 'it' or 'rag' is almost impossible when you can't remember what sound a 'g' or a 't' makes. In a Montessori classroom we really focus on helping children recognize the sounds of letters so they can read and write phonetically, then as they progress forward we introduce 'puzzle words' (things like 'the' 'two' and 'these' that can't be sounded out and just have to be memorized). Poor A has such a hard time recalling sounds that she treats ever word like a puzzle word, staring at it and reading it over and over again until she can recognize it on site.

It's a long and laborious process. I could tell how hard it was as she struggled to read the short book, constantly rubbing her hands over her eyes and looking away from the book. We spent nearly 20 minutes on  a book with maybe 25 phonetic words in it. Most of that was focusing on getting her to keep her hands away from her face so she could actually see the words, rather than just trying to guess what is on the page. A did agree with me that it's even harder to read when you can't see the letters and kept trying to stop herself rubbing her eyes. And we did finish. We're going to have to read that book again tomorrow, but that will be ok. All I can say is that I hope it gets easier, because I know she really wants to read like her big sisters.

Montessori Sunday (on Monday!): Moveable Alphabet

Oops, seems like I missed my opportunity yesterday to exclaim the wonderfulness of Montessori materials. Guess I'll just have to make it up today. Don't worry, nothing particularly interesting happened in our classroom...or at least that's what happens when you spend most of the time completely absorbed in working with one of two children at a time.

Today I'd like to introduce you to the moveable alphabet, one of my absolute favorite Montessori materials, and such a great idea I can't believe that it has never come into more common practice. Seriously, once the purposes and uses of this material were pointed out to me I couldn't believe I never used one in school myself.

The moveable alphabet is a language material introduced to children when they are around age 4 to 4.5 and have demonstrated a solid knowledge of the sandpaper letters. Once the child can recognize the individual letters and recall the sound each makes they are shown the moveable alphabet. The letters of the alphabet are usually cut out from wood and colored pink (for consonants) and blue (for vowels). Ideally the letters are in cursive, though print ones are also made by companies.

The moveable alphabet provides a way for the child to write words BEFORE they can really control a pencil enough to write legibly. Dr. Montessori found that young children were more than capable of writing: they knew that words were made up of individual sounds, that each letter had a sound, and that they had ideas of their own that they wanted to write. The only thing really holding them back was the inability to control a pencil with enough precision to produce legible letters. So Maria Montessori designed a tool for writing that only required children to know the sound they needed and to recognize its unique shape. They could now write before they built up the hand strength to control a pencil.

When the teacher first presents the material she shows the child how to carry the rather large box to a mat and how to open it. The child is asked to get their favorite sandpaper letter and bring it to the mat. The teacher then assists the child in finding that letter in the alphabet box, and lets them know that each sound they have learned with the sandpaper letters is in this box. Together the adult and child come up with a phonetic word (such as 'plant') and the teacher assists the child in identifying each sound in the word and then finding it in the box. This is repeated several times, with the student being encouraged to think of their own words.

Later the children are shown how to write short phrases (like 'the red rods') and eventually short stories. For the latter they are shown a much smaller alphabet where the letters are simply printed on plastic tiles or laminated paper and not cut out into their shape.

All the writing is done phonetically, and the directress does not worry about the child's spelling at this point. Often the child may spell cat with a 'k' instead of 'c' but as long as it is clear that they are listening to all the sounds in a word the spelling does not matter. This work is designed simply to introduce children to a new way of expressing themselves using written words. Focusing on abstract concepts like spelling can frustrate the child and potentially dissuade them from wanting to write.

Did you notice that nowhere in this article did I talk about reading with the moveable alphabet? That wasn't an oversight, but done purposefully. In a montessori classroom writing comes before reading. Amazingly when you step back and think about it writing is actually an easier process than reading. Writing requires taking a known idea, analyzing the sounds in a word, attaching the sound to its symbol, and transcribing the symbol with some sort of tool. Meanwhile reading is almost the reverse process. An unknown idea is presented, the symbol needs to be identified and the sound attached, then the sounds need to be blended together to create meaning/understanding. 

Because of this Montessori children are first taught writing, then reading; the reverse of what is done in most elementary schools. Reading usually comes about 6 months after writing and hopefully from the spontaneous understanding/connection of the child between their own writing and other written words. But it's all in the preparation, and it's a long road to get there!