Play and "Free Time" During the School Day

Rationale

I teach kids who haven't been successful at their traditional schools. My students' behavior significantly impacts their learning. They exhibit behavior issues do to various mental health issues and/or trauma they have experienced. Part of their daily instruction is group time with our social worker where students learn how to spot and deal with bullying, how to be kind, how to use coping skills when they get angry, etc. We keep track of their behavior throughout the day and they earn free time at the end of the day.

The Wrong Way

Here's what it looked like for the first 6 weeks:

• Fights about who gets picked to use the three computer stations. 
• Students watching others play on the computer. 
• A kid wanting to play "doctor" with a stethoscope we had in our room for some reason. No one else wanting to play doctor so then this kid would have a temper tantrum. 
• A kid wandering the perimeter of the room stopping at my desk or random shelves to ask what he could do for free time, never satisfied with our answers. 

Free time was not fun time!

The Better Way

Over our two week fall break I made play choice cards. Things like "coloring", "Play-Doh", "pretend play", "games", and "puzzles" were on the cards. After returning from break, the kids were taught what each card looked like at free time.  Now, a student gets to choose one or two cards and those are the two activities the class can do during our (structured-ish) free time.

For pretend play I was able to get some hospital supplies- masks, caps, shoe covers, gauze strips, and syringes (no needles), to go along with the stethoscope. The kids were in heaven. Their enjoyment of this activity prompted me to think of other options for pretend play, so we now have a cash register, play money, and empty food containers for a "store".

What I Learned

• Kids talk to each other more now during free time (and it's appropriate most of the time)! 
• Kids use more language than we knew they even had! It's fun to listen.  
• Kids are creative.  They use a puzzle piece as a credit card, they make rockets with Legos, they use chairs for hospital beds. 
• Kids are able to work out issues on their own (for the most part). Maybe this is because they are motivated to solve problems in order to keep playing?

Overheard

• "Doctor, I need some hot chocolate. Hurry, these babies are about to stop breathing."
• "I know what's wrong. You are allergic to peanuts. I have to give you a shot."
• "I'm having a barbecue. I can't leave with all these people at my house." (while taking in to a plastic plumbing pipe)
• "No, we both work here at this gas station. This here is my little brother. I'm just here to help him today."

Bottom Line

Kids need unstructured time to play, explore, talk, and create.  Brains don't stop growing and making connections just because we (teachers) aren't feeding them math facts and making them practice handwriting. Playing is learning.

This article was my inspiration for starting to write this post:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/

What I Wish People Understood About Learning to Read

If you think about all the pieces that have to fit together to help a child learn to read it's overwhelming. Here's a list of a few concepts kids need to begin to read:

- Know where to begin reading on a page of text
- Know that we read left to right
- Learn the difference between a letter and a word
- Understand that there is space between words on a printed page
- Know the sounds that letters make
- Know that certain letters, when put together, make a distinct sound ("ck" doesn't say "/k/ /k/", it just says, /k/)
- Have some words memorized because they can't be "sounded out" (the, was)

Then, if they want to be able to make sense of what they read, they have to have an even bigger bank of words to read automatically so more cognitive resources can be spent understanding the story, rather than deciphering unknown words.

So, learning to read is tough!

Following are some comments I hear adults make when talking about young readers. And responses I'd like to say.

Trying-to-Be-Helpful-Adult: "I think she's just memorizing the book. She's not really reading the words."
Me: "Awesome! That means she has heard some fluent reader read this book to her enough times to make the story familiar. This probably also means that this child has access to many other books being read to her. The more exposure this child gets to books, the better her understanding of story structure and the better her vocabulary will be. She's also probably seeing someone point to the words as they read the story so she's being exposed to those important sight words we want her to memorize!"

Trying-to-Be-Helpful-Adult: "He just wants to read this same book over and over."
Me: "Awesome! How great that this boy has found a favorite book to love. Let him read that book a million times. Read that book to him each day if he wants. Maybe after you read it one day you can then say you'll pick a new book to try and attempt to broaden his horizons that way. Whatever you do, don't ever say, 'Nope, I'm sick of that book. We're not reading that book anymore." What a way to crush motivation that would be!"

Trying-to-Be-Helpful-Adult: "I don't think she's sounding out these words. I think she's just memorized them."
Me: "Awesome! That's exactly what we want to happen! Do you sound out each word when you're reading a book or do you know most of the words automatically 'by memory'? That's what I thought. You have them memorized. If you're really concerned, you can write those words on different paper, type them in different fonts and hang them around the house or classroom. You can also ask the child to find those words in books as she reads."

Trying-to-Be-Helpful-Adult (working with a kid reading a book who gets stumped on a word): "Sound it out."
Me: "No, he cannot sound out the word 'barn' or 'the', or 'what'. It doesn't work. Sounding out only works on words with regular patterns such as 'can', 'shut', or 'family'. Kids need to learn more strategies besides 'sound it out'. How about saying, 'look at the picture, now look at the beginning sound of that word, do you have a guess now?' or you can say something like, 'you know the word look, take off the L and this word has an H...how would that sound /h/...?' If you only tell a child to sound it out, they will continue to be confused and frustrated by what they read when that strategy fails them."

I know staff and parents and volunteers are really trying to be helpful and everyone really wants kids to learn how to read, but sometimes I get frustrated when I hear these things. It seems like these comments usually come with a negative connotation that is also observed by the new reader. I wish a conversation would go like this:

Trying-to-Be-Helpful-Adult: It really seems like Jimmy has memorized this story/those words. Is that age-appropriate? Is there something else I can be doing with him to make sure he continues to develop the necessary skills to be a successful reader?
Me: Kids to tend to memorize familiar books and that's OK. You can read that book with him and point to each word as he reads so he learns to match a spoken word to a printed word. (and then continue the conversation further)

Have any of you had these same frustrations? How have you handled these comments?

Monday Mystery Book

I survived the first two weeks of school! It has been pretty darn fun but also pretty darn tiring! I'm working with kindergarten and first grade students who have emotional and mental heath issues. Before school started I got all kinds of warnings from people like, "the kids don't like reading" and, "So-and-So will just tear up the room when he gets upset so you don't want to have that on your desk" and, "the class really hated reading so the old teacher had to do math first and squeeze reading in later". Needless to say I was worried and had no idea how to plan for various levels and such severe behavior problems. I was still up for the challenge! I told John my goal for the year was to have the students leave my room and head back to their home schools with a positive attitude toward reading. I was going to MAKE readers! I also wanted to set the right tone in the room. I wanted to trust that if the students saw nice things and we did fun activities, they wouldn't want to tear the room up when they got angry.

On the first day of school I introduced our Monday Mystery Book. At circle time I showed the students the wrapped book on display. A student with good behavior would get to open the book at the end of the day and we would do a fun activity with the book. When the time came, the students were all eager to be picked. The first book I picked was an Elephant and Piggie title by Mo Willems- A Big Guy Took My Ball. The social worker in my room used to be a camp counselor so she was more than capable of acting out the book with me. The kids enjoyed the story but the best part happened the next day. One student arrived and came right over to me during breakfast to ask if we were going to have a mystery book that day!

This week's book on display

My second Monday Mystery Book was Hugo and the Really, Really, Really Long String. I LOVED the activity I did with this and I'm so sad I didn't take any pictures. My goal for the rest of the year will be to do a better job getting pictures to be able to post here.

While I was reading this story about a hippo following a string around his town I had the classroom assistant take yarn from our classroom, down the hall, into an office. He did a great job looping the string above backpacks in the hallway, around a copy machine and under the office door. At the end of the string was a "treasure"- new Play-Doh.

When I finished reading the book I acted surprised when I looked toward our schedule on the board and saw some string. I asked if they remembered the string being there when we went over the calendar. The kids were SO EXCITED to follow the string down the hall and find the treasure. When we came back to the room they got some free time with the Play-Doh.

In a future post, I'll write about play and free time in my classroom. The kids I'm teaching have poor social skills, anger issues, etc. but when they have been given or earn free time at the end of the day, there are few issues. I've observed one student show another how to hold a plastic bowling ball, and I've heard conversation and sharing while playing with Play-Doh.  I intend to keep this free time in our schedule so we can work on social skills, teach them new board games, and work on conversation skills.

In the meantime, I've got to get back to planning my lessons!

Favorite Picture Book Readings: July

Here are my stats for July
Picture Book Read: 47
Children's Chapter Books Read: 0
Other Books (novels/YA books/adult non-fiction): 3

I read some REALLY FABULOUS books this month! If I made a million dollars or was granted one wish, I would want to be able to buy any picture books I wanted, at any time. So many good ones to read and share with kids and friends.

The REALLY great news from this month is that I am beginning a new position as a special education teacher with kindergarten and first graders. I'm super pumped! I'm gonna flood them with books. Only good books. What's the point in sharing bad books? I'll be posting a lot about my reading plans.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy these great titles!



The author describes the things he can do with his pen.  This is a great book for encouraging kids to be creative and to let their ideas be known.


This book SCREAMS to be read aloud. Mouse is trying to write a story. Frog wants to help but he's a little over-the-top. Be prepared to ham it up when you read Frog's part. He's great.



I liked another one of the author's wordless books, Flashlight, so I wanted to check this one out too. This story shows a boy doing various activities inside and outside, throughout the seasons. The die-cuts allow readers to predict what season will be next.



The tiny king lives in a world where everything around him is big-his house, his horse, his spread of food. And none of it makes him happy. A big princess comes along and things change. This was a sweet story with cool digital collage illustrations.



Pomelo doesn't just see green as green. She sees the dismal green of doubt and the muddy green that comes after the rain. She also sees the hypnotizing red of love and the surprising red of ripe tomatoes. This book could be used to help kids get more descriptive with their writing or just to appreciate all the colors around us.



The director is trying to shoot a movie about a moose but someone keeps interrupting. This would be great for readers theater. I laughed a lot.



I loved this book. I loved the author's sense of humor. It's one where you definitely need the illustrations along with the text to appreciate the story. Funny and sweet.



Each experiment includes the following information: Question, Hypothesis, What You Need, What to Do, and What Happened. Questions explored include things like "Do dogs like to be covered in glitter?" and "What is the best way to speed up a boring car ride" I found the book funny and entertaining. I could see it leading to students designing some fun experiments to write about.



They can't read books. A snail in the driveway causes too much commotion. Vanilla ice cream is too flavorful. Read this one to find out even more things that upset Mr. and Mrs. Dullard and see if the kids can survive.


This is an older book and for some reason I had never read it. Several people have talked about it but I just never picked it up. I'm so glad I finally did. I loved the story of Mr. Plumbean resisting the urge to fit in. There's a good message in here for kids and adults.



The illustrations caught my attention in this book-hand built and shot with a camera. Kids might be able to relate to the boy in the story wanting to run away and will find his advice and adventure fun.



I like finding books about books. This one includes three simple, little books written by a boy, his sister, and his little brother. They decide to put their books together into a bigger book because, "books are better when they are shared". Good message.



Bird poop saves the day.



This book was needing to be re-shelved at the library and I decided to take a peek through it while I was at the reference desk. As I read I was imagining doing something with my class with a long string...following it to some fun surprise. The source of Hugo's string cracked me up when I read it!



This was another one I accidentally found at the library. I paged through it and my finger stopped on the poem called "Farts or Burps". I'm a sucker for funny, stupid poems and this book is filled with several. There are also some about "Haters" and "Super Mom".

Happy Reading!

Books and the Kids Who Loved Them

When I think about my favorite books, many of them are tied to a certain person. Sometimes it's the person who recommended the book to me and sometimes it's a person who read the book and discussed it with me. When I think about some of my favorite picture books I think about certain kids who loved the book with me.

This book will forever remind me of one of my first graders. He was a super smart, cute kid who sometimes had some very negative behavior. When I read Enemy Pie to the class, the book quickly became this boy's favorite. He would often be reading it in the reading area during literacy stations. The book actually went missing from my classroom that year. I have no idea what happened to the book, but I remember thinking this student took it. I kind of like the idea of him liking the book so much he wanted to take it. I never found the book.

One of my first graders who had autism loved this book and all the funny sounds it contained.  He would carry the book around and ask me or my classroom assistant to read certain pages. His favorite sound to repeat was, "dibble dibble dop dop".

This one was a favorite of another kiddo with autism. He pretty much had this book memorized and liked to act it out. The cool thing about this kiddo was that he was open to reading other Elephant and Piggie books with his therapists. Today I Will Fly was another one of his favorites. He liked these books so much that he would often try to draw pictures from them and make props to carry around so he could act out the story.

My 15 month old nephew has been favoring this book for probably six months now. It has been cute to watch him learn to lift the flaps and see how he reacts to us reading the book with him. He smiles every time a flap gets opened.

We bought this book for one of my cousins for Christmas a bunch of years ago. It's a funny book about a farty dog who saves his family from robbers. I don't know that her parents appreciated how many times the word FART was in the book (the girls used to say they "gassed" not farted) but I like to think my cousins got some fun out of the book.

                                                     

We gave this book to a cousin and a few weeks later we got the cute video below from her mom. I love it. She totally got the "pop...oh no!" part of the book.

There are a few other books that are tied to people for me. Strega Nona reminds me of the school librarian who first read that book to my class. The Happy Man and His Dump Truck reminds me of my dad. The Boxcar Children reminds me of my second grade teacher who shared that with our class. The Night Before Christmas reminds me of my mom reading to us and pretending to "throw up" when she read "threw up the sash". All these memories put a smile on my face. I hope there are a few kids out there who can remember a time I read a good book to them in class and put a smile on their faces.

Summer Reading Recommendations, Part 2

We aren't even halfway through summer but I'm almost done with my original summer reading list! There are just two books left for me to read...Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis and Mindset. I really underestimated how much reading I would do! Thank goodness I've got a nice stack of upcoming titles ready to go.



My new book club is reading this for the July meeting (which I will miss).



My old book club read this for their June meeting. I was the one who put this title into the hat since my mom recommended it to me so I better read it!



I want to read this because I've listened to several stories on NPR about Snowden and the book. Reviews online said it was easy to read.


     
A tutor I supervised liked this author and I recently ran into his name on two different occasions so I think it's a sign I have to try one (or two) of his books. The first one won the Pulitzer, the second title was his debut.



A book-loving former supervisor recommended this to me a while ago. I recently found it on the "pay what you can" cart at our local used bookstore and snatched it up.

I will try this book for probably the 5th time. If I don't get through it, I will really disappoint my husband.



I know this book has been around a while. I think I've thought about reading it but get distracted with other titles. I watched the movie but now I will read the book.



I love Amy Poehler from SNL and Parks and Recreation and I love memoirs. Hopefully this will be entertaining.



I don't remember how I heard about this book. I read one of the author's other titles (Speak) for a graduate class and loved it so I'm hoping this is good too.



Again, don't remember where I got the recommendation from but supposedly if you liked Eleanor and Park and The Fault in Our Stars you will love this book. Seems like a good one.


So there's my list for the next couple months. What are you planning to read? What have you read this summer and loved?

Happy Reading!

Seven Reasons to Read Wordless Picture Books

I've come to really enjoy wordless picture books. I like to use them when I read with groups of children, no matter the age. I find they are a great way to get attention and engage a group. With just a little encouragement children really pay attention to the illustrations and help tell the story. If you haven't shared a wordless picture book with a child, check out the list of titles at the end of this post and give one a try. Here are seven reasons wordless books are cool.


1. Wordless books help build comprehension. Children have to make inferences, understand sequencing, and make predictions when reading a wordless book.

2. Wordless books allow children who can't yet read, share a story. There is no text to stumble over. Children can look at the pictures and use their growing vocabulary to tell the story.

3. Wordless books encourage participation. When sharing these books with groups I have children raise their hand when they have an idea for each page. A different student continues the story on each page. This builds listening comprehension and cooperation as the group works together to tell the story.

4. Wordless books expose children to a different way of telling a story. When I have shared wordless books with children I've found that many have never read a wordless book.

5. Wordless books encourage creativity. One child might tell the story one way, while another child will use different words or set a different tone for the book.

6. Wordless books allow for savoring. There is no text to read to signal when to turn the page. The illustrations carry the story. Children can linger on a spread for several minutes, taking in all the details.

7. Wordless books allow for differentiation. The stories can be told simply, or with advanced vocabulary.


For younger children:

                  

                                     

For older children:

                     

              

Happy Reading!

Favorite Picture Book Readings: June 2015

Here are my stats for June:
Picture Book Read: 37
Children's Chapter Books Read: 7
Other Books (novels/YA books/adult non-fiction): 3

My 16 favorites are below. They are all picture books with the exception of one easy chapter book. I'll have to do another post on some of my favorite chapter books and young adult novels.


This book was recommended to me. I laughed and cringed at a couple of the pictures of Simon and his snotty, sick face. In the end, the germs (who are not afraid to introduce themselves) talk to Simon and he learns better habits.



This alphabet book included some different occupations such as skateboarder, explorer, aviator, and oceanographer. Both the jobs included and the illustrations were interesting.



A teacher friend mentioned this book several times, so when I stumbled across it at the library I had to grab it. Rapunzel misunderstands everything the prince says and it leads to some funny outcomes. The rhyming text and silly pictures would make this a fun read aloud.



Cute beginner chapter book. I liked Dory. She annoys her siblings and she's spunky and imaginative.



When I saw this new Elephant and Piggie title I grabbed it right away. Yet another good one from Mo Willems.



A little bird is tired of saying the same thing day after day. He makes up funny sounds to say but Crow does not approve. This will make for a fun read aloud with all the silly sounds.



This is a lift-the-flap board book good for toddlers. The illustrations were bright, the text rhymes, and it includes animals sounds.


A nice book for kids dealing with a move. It includes two word phrases and pictures that clearly show how the kids are feeling as things are getting packed away. The ending shows that a tough move doesn't have to be bad forever.



This was a sweet book for a parent to read to a child. The text was simple and the illustrations included some shimmery shine to make it eye-catching for little ones.



I've read this book before but wanted to reread it. I like that Little Pea has trouble when it comes to eating candy. He would rather be eating his vegetables.



Will their plan to catch a bird work? This was a funny book with great illustrations.


An entertaining take on the telephone game. The birds keep messing up the message Peter's mother sends until a wise one sets them straight.



Any time you have an excuse to say the word "butt" with kids, you'll have an engaged audience. In this title, you get to talk about all kinds of animal butts. Share with caution!


I like finding new wordless books. The illustrations in this one are simple pencil and watercolor drawings. The boy loses his airplane and spends a lifetime trying to get it back.


A creative story inspired by a real lion statue in Paris. Cool illustrations in an over-sized, horizontal format made this book stand out.




Another book someone recommended I read. A boy discovers a whale in his pool. His mom doesn't help him get it out. He attempts to bargain with the whale. Read it to find out what happens. This would be a fun read aloud because the boy has such a strong voice in this story.

Happy Reading!