Day 2! So, I thought that today went pretty well. It was my day to be the lead teacher for our big activity which was using sticky notes to help us identify characters within different versions of Cinderella--focusing on indirect and direct characteristics for the characters within the story. For homeroom we had each student say hello in another language--this was a great opportunity for some of our more culturally diverse students to shine. One girl, we'll call her Jamie, is Hmong and she is very quiet in class. She shot her hand up to give us an example of a different way to say "Hello!" It was great to see her so engaged. Everyone had fun. Then we played "What's my name again?" and all the students seemed to like this as well--they wanted to go another round but we decided to get to work.
The bellringer was GREAT! Everyone shared their newly made characters by taking on that persona--even the three teachers had to do some improve acting. We were laughing and having a good time, the kids are excited to put it together later in the week.
Next we talked about Cinderella--what does she look like. Because we had a lot of Cinderella books out in the back of the class, I think some of them drew images from there. They also had theri newly created characters in their minds, so, I think they felt like they had more choice in their creations. Despite this, we still had a nice discussion on why our Disney Cinderella looks a certain way and what that says about American values. We went over the definition of culture and value--which went very well--and then we introduced sticky noting by doing a "story time."
The kids sat around me, with their sticky notes ready, and as I read a page we would stop and see what characters and characteristics we found. The kids really got into it and were making a lot of great suggestions. It was nice to have Kim and Brittany in the audience adding their comments too--this gave the kids more scaffolding and modeling by being able to observe their teachers participating and adding to the reading. We cut the group story short and let the kids pair up and chose their own book to sticky note and gave them the worksheet we modeled together. This was the best part of the day!
All the kids were so engrossed in their books! Even Nikki (we will call her), who was having trouble focusing today--Brittany talked to her to make sure she was okay, but we think there is something going on outside of class--was reading her story outloud with her partner and talking about their sticky notes together. Jamie grabbed the Hmong Cinderella book and she worked with her partner--an older and more confident English reader--spent the rest of the class reading their book and filling in their worksheet. Those who finished their books went back and grabbed more. Even Tom, who said he hated fairy tales, was reading another book as soon as he got the chance. Tom and Liza were being a bit chatty, again today, and we did have to separate them, but they worked on the sticky note project together and did well. I think they just get really excited and loud about things which can distract the rest of the class.
It was great to see them so engaged in fairy tales! Kate was checking out the YA adaptations we had on hand--there is a Chinese YA Cinderella book that she was really interested in, she is Asian herself and knew the child version of the Chinese Cinderella already, so this book really appealed to her. It is so important for kids to see themselves represented in books and I saw the power of that today. Anther girl wanted a copy of the Grimm's story to take home and read--spurring similar reactions in Tom and some other students. Based on the enthusiasm that these books were met with and the desire of the students to read more of them, I think we are going to have silent reading tomorrow morning during homeroom so they can check out more of the books!
Overall, I thought today was great. We had to cut out the PSA because we ran out of time, but it is better to have too much planned than not enough. I think we need to besure to give the students the time they need whcih cuts into other activities; as long as reading and writing are getting done, and the kids are having a good time, I don't think we need to worry about the other fun activities that get cut out.
For tomorrow, we have our reflection note cards to hand back--with more messages from the three of us. I hope we can get Nikki's attention and keep it for the whole class while making sure that Tom and Liza don't talk too much or too loudly. We also dive into Little Red Riding Hood tomorrow! Wahoo! Day 3 here we come!
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