Saturday, May 31, 2008

School's Out for the Summer!

I'm shedding tears as we speak because I don't get to teach all those lovely children on Monday (yeah right). I love teaching, but this has been a VERY challenging year. All of the special area teachers who get my class for an hour a day ask me all the time, "How do you deal with these kids all day? They would drive me crazy." We'll just say some days it was a short drive.
Even though it's been tough, I really do love those kids and will miss them. They made a TON of progress this year. That's one thing I love about first grade is that you can see the kids get better at reading, for example, everyday. They grow a lot as students. They come to you as nonreaders and leave you reading chapter books. I am also very proud to say that 90% of my kids are on grade level in reading. That's even with over half of my class being so low that they received reading intervention. So the intervention must have worked. :)
The last month of school is a little crazy and hectic with testing, field trips, and all the other activities. So here are a few little funnies we had over the last month.
We went to the Salato Wildlife Center in Frankfort. While we were eating our lunch on the grass, geese were wandering around us. One of the geese pooped (birds don't really have poop, my bird professor referred to it as dejecta. But I don't know if you can say the goose dejectaed. Anywho...), and all the kids went crazy. One of my girls who just cracks me up all the time said, "It's no big deal guys. Every animal poops!" Such wisdom.
There is a little boy in my class that comes in telling me some story everyday. He is so talkative and so funny. He has bright red hair. Well one day he came in telling me how his baby sister had really curly hair, it wouldn't go straight even when it is wet. I asked him if was red like his. "No. Her hair is blond. I guess she'll have to dye it so we can match." Good plan. He also told me one day, "I know the person who is going to be the next President."
"Really? Who?"
"I'm pretty sure my nana is going to be it."
Last one. Thanks to those who actually read this. It was really for me to be able to reflect, but it's nice to share with those who might get a little laugh out of my first graders. For Mother's Day we wrote acrostic poems (the ones where you write Mother going down the page and come up with a word that starts with each of the letters in mother). For "T" one of the boys wrote, "Ticks- she checks me for ticks." I about died laughing. It was great. For "Y" in Mother's Day, a girl wrote, "Yields when she is supposed to." I loved it!