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!