The Education of Courtney: May musings

Well, with eighth grade graduation just over a week away and the end of the school year not far behind, the countdown has been happening for a while. The official numbers say that there are 8 teaching days left, and 10.5 actual days of school left. It's ironic that I am just now feeling like I am getting into the groove of things and can focus on how to teach these children to be creative and introduce them to the world through books. I just finished reading novels with my four different grades and it was a success!! As with anything I would change it the second, and probably third and even the fourth time I do the unit. It was kind of hit and miss with the books I chose for the students. I read The Giver with the eighth graders and they enjoyed it. There was a lot of grumbling about the vocabulary I designed to go with the book but they really became engrossed with the story and enjoyed it (even though one of my eighth graders will never actually admit it-they liked it). My seventh graders just finished reading Julie of the Wolves. Somewhere along the line of this adventure I have been on all year, I realized that if I want to teach rich literature stuff like theme, character and plot, I need to drop the reading level of the book two or more grade levels below the grade my kids are in. We talked a lot about character and learning about yourself with this book. I even did a book project (no...not a report-that's old fashioned and boring) that two out of my three students understood well enough. It's difficult to get my students to do anything from scratch; in other words, things they have to think of on their own. This project was about identifying discoveries, setbacks and successes of the main character of the book. The project was a success and the kids did well on it. It was my first attempt at a book project from a handy dandy little teacher book I bought. On to 6th grade! With these students I read "The Egypt Game," an story about a group of middle school age-ish kids who create this imaginary game of being in Egypt. This is a hard concept for my students because they live in such a literal world that does not involve having an imagination. I picked the book because I have one sixth grader who is bored out of his mind due to his intelligence but for some reason doesn't want to admit that he's actually way smarter than any of the other sixth graders. (I'm not talking about bragging rights here but just understanding that it is okay to be smart.) This book was tough and lengthy for some of my sixth graders but in the end they understood the book and were able to fluently talk about the importance of plot and order of the plot in the story. Lastly, with my fifth graders we read Indian in the Cupbord and they got a kick out of the way that the author "made the Indian to talk." (For those of you who have not read it or it has been a really, really long time-the author stereotypes the indian and makes him talk very awkwardly and funny English). They also thought the story was a bit silly because plastic figures don't actually come to life (what I silly idea, I know *insert sarcasm*). They made it through and I gave them their last novel to read for the year and one of my students has already finished his (although he did so at the cost of not finishing his math). Oh well, there is always tomorrow to finish math work, right? I am glad that I had the insite to finally do novels for reading because I realize that this is how I prefer to teach kids reading. I must say, that the reading curriculum we have for the k-6 is a good curriculum and has all those nice qualities us teachers look for in a curriculum. I just like the novels better because they are thematic and allow a lot more flexibility. Yay for successes, right!! I just wish I had done it earlier.
Over here we have gotten a teasing of spring and the last two days have dumped rain, which flooded the basement of the school again. The boys have been pumping water for almost two weeks now. Spring is coming and the fields are finally green over here. It is such a contrast to the brown fields that I have been looking at since I moved over here.
I will leave you with some pictures of the bulletin board I created with my students' art work (taught by yours truly!). Enjoy and I will see you soon.