About some ridiculous expectations
Well, it is not my first rodeo and, actually, it might be actually a good point in life to count properly how many rodeos aka Septembers there have been so far (I really don’t know) but, it turned out that I had been a bit naive about what to expect in the classroom on the 3rd of September. Or, in other words, my students managed to suprise me once more! Hooray to that. I suppose)
I knew that my students would come back having forgotten a lot and that we would not be able to pick it up where we left off, not after three months of no-school life. However, naively, I was hoping that they will remember something and that our September life will not involve starting off a brand new blank page. I was wrong!
The funny thing about it is that a few minutes into a lesson that was not necessarily bad but also not my dream come true, I kind of split my attention. There was a part of my brain that was solely responsible for the lesson taking place and the other one stepped back and started to look at the events the way a trainer would, connecting the dots and making mental notes about ‘the things to improve’. That was an interesting experience, I have to say.
This post today will have a format different to every other post in this series. I will try to analyse the things that did not go to plan and the solutions I already decided to put in place.
Things that I liked on the first real day
- We talked about the things we did on holiday and it was great
- We kept our Months Improvisation Song and now we are singing about ‘September’, I did my verse and the kids did theirs.
- We did an introductory reading task and I was really happy with how it went. The kids really wanted to read (already a reason to celebrate) and to find the mistakes in the song.
- We played our numbers spinner Maths game (‘I want…’) and it was very productive.
- We made a mural about our favourite things that we will put up on the wall, Our Solar System. We sat together on the floor around a sheet of paper and we went on creating.
- Even in the first lesson we had a good variety of interaction patterns: whole class, individual work, activities led by kids, collaboration on the project.
- We have a special board where we keep the plan for the lesson.
Things that I didn’t like on the first real day
- In one line, the kids were over-stimulated and out of control.
- It was the first lesson in our new classroom, out of the previous set-up, associated with good habits and routines and there were too many new elements.
- I allowed the kids to sit the way they wanted, with the friends they wanted to be around.
- I decided to include the rules revision during the second lesson (for a reason) but I had to pay for that
- I decided to include one of our favourite Maths games, to balance ‘the new’ with ‘the familiar’ but, I have to admit, there were better solutions, something else than a game would work better.
- We used some of the favourite songs but I also included a new song, ‘Back to school’ but, in hindsight, I think it was not really necessary. It could have been left for a bit later.
What has changed since the first day aka Solutions
- Nobody is sitting where they want anymore. This was my plan and I announced it in the first lesson that during the month of September we are going to have a different seating arrangement every single day. I prepared some September vocabulary cards and glued them onto the desks and a set of cards with the same words. Everyone coming into the room picks up one card and then looks for their place to sit. I want to experiment with different seating arrangements (especially that I am still working on the arrangements of the desks, too) and I want to check which combination works the best. There are some dangers involved, some tricky combinations to be avoided at all cost, but I am willing to take that risk, in order to learn. It was only yesterday that I saw a meme or a video on the social media in which teachers were saying that they let everyone to sit the way they want on day 1 specifically in order to find out who shouldn’t sit with whom. Plus we are also going to learn some cool September words)
- Our rules have not been printed, laminated and displayed on the wall above the board. We have been reading and revising them at the start of every lesson. There are only few, my basic set: I sit nicely, I listen to the teacher, I speak quietly, I raise my friend, we are friends and Russian is beautiful but I speak English here. If we need, we will add to the list.
- I have also decided to add another poster ‘How are we working today?‘ to help kids understand the different interaction patterns and modes of work. You can see all of them in the poster underneath and these are the terms that I am using to describe what the lesson is going to be about. They also help a lot with giving instructions to particular tasks. The most important differentiation at the moment is the one between ‘follow the teacher step by step’ and ‘you can make your own decisions’.
- I reinstated the tool that we already abandoned, namely, the final stage of the lesson with the official announcements of the grades for the lesson, for work and for behaviour. We did not quite abandon them because I still needed my notes to add comments to the electronic journal for all my students but making formal announcements of praise and of not-so-good feedback was not necessary at the end of the previous academic year. This is back and it helps to summarise the lesson, to highlight once more the superstar behaviour and to explain why some grades are not very good.
- We have a new call – response and last we used ;Autum leaves’ (teacher) – ‘falling down’ (students). They have already customised it and some of them respond ‘falling up’, just because it is funny. I need one more of those.
- We sang a lot of our favourite songs during the other two days and I am planning to keep that trend for another week, without repeating, until we go through everything in our Songbook.
- With one of my groups, I have put the games on hold for now, we are not ready yet. With the other one, the games are at the end of the lesson plan, in the ‘if time’ section. We need to get back into the school mode, back into the focus, before we start doing something more entertaining.
What’s next?
Not much, just the everyday and helping my adorable monster get back to the proper working mode. We will sing our songs, we will definitely do a story next week. We are still working without our books, rationing resources. We already have the beautiful notebooks, though, so there is a place to keep all the notes. Step by step!
Happy teaching!