Student work examples

After spending most days fighting to stay awake until 9 or 10 PM, last night, I was wide awake at 11 PM. I wasn't quite planned for today and wanted to get up and go in a little early. But, I think I fell asleep around 12:30 AM, and then I was up at 6:30 AM with the alarm. I was feeling so tired that I reset the alarm and got out of bed at 7. I had one of those mornings when nothing felt right when I tried on clothes. I felt fine in some things, but in thinking about the walk to and from school, I knew I'd want to be in something different. The walk normally takes me about 20 minutes but this morning it took 30! I guess I was moving pretty slow (or maybe it had something to do with walking in my flip flops and not tennis shoes).

Even though I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be, the day actually went really well. I decided that I was doing too much talking at them and not having them do enough. We changed up the morning circle time. I figured they would be tired of the rhythm thing. They all rub their legs at the end of each circle time because they are slapping them too hard as we keep the rhythm. Instead, they said good morning to the person next to them, calling them by name. The person responded with the same greeting back. They were cute, and it helped me learn names a little bit more. I think I have about half of each group figured out. There are always those stand-outs whose names you remember before the others, though. Usually that's because they are disruptive or a behavior problem! After the weather and calendar where volunteers wrote in the information from a word bank , I broke them into 3 groups and we did centers. The first center was a charades game with the flashcards from the day before, the second center was an Action Concentration (memory/matching) game, and the third center was a Twister game. I have two counselors so they each took a center and I ran one of them.

In the afternoon, they played Bingo with body parts in the spaces. I learned something new. The kids kept screaming out, "reee-chuuu!" (roll the r on that one!) Apparently that's what you say when you are one spot away from Bingo. I guess that means that it's in reach? They were hilarious, and when they got Bingo, their prize was a sticker. They go CRAZY over stickers! We all have ID name tags on lanyards that identify us at the school. Some of the kids have their name covered up with all of the stickers that they trade on the bus and get in class. They have rushed up to me and grabbed my name tag to give me stickers, too. It's pretty funny.

Here is my ID card so far (only 3 days in...I can only imagine how it'll look by the end of next week!







After the Bingo game, they did their journal writing and caught up on other journal topics they hadn't finished. Then it was time for ice cream! Today's flavor was Crunch ice cream bars. YUM! I only ate one. :)


Some of you asked...

Here is one of the drawings. I liked that these looked nothing like the pictures on the flashcards.











I liked this one because the Japanese writing tells me that she really does understand what the words mean. On the picture on the left, the person on the side is saying, "Ganbatte, ne" (meaning, Good luck/hang in there/keep going). The picture on the right says, "Yoroshiku ne" and that's what you say when you first meet someone (when you'd shake hands).







This looks like a cartoon to me!

This girl drew all four of her pictures in about 5 minutes. She is always the first one done and running around from one thing to another. Her attention span is pretty short! I need a bunch of activities to keep her occupied after finishing. Usually, she just wants to just spin around on the desk chair in the corner that she is not supposed to be on!