My "Classroom"
We're learning lots of stuff as we go, the kids and I!
1) I read to them in the mornings and right after lunch. They take turns getting to pick books; everyone alternates days. Otherwise, they fight over which books they want to read. And... as a result, certain students keep going back to old favourites, even though they've heard it hundreds of times now. I've read Robert Munsch so many times now, I've basically memorized them. Funny enough, the two students from last year also loved Robert Munsch too.
2) I got tired of how much German they've been speaking in school, so we've agreed to a system where if I hear them speaking German, his/her name gets written on the board. After three strikes, they spend two minutes cleaning up the classroom during recess.
3) We have Phys Ed with the Gr. 1, 2, and 3s. We usually play kickball outside, if it's nice. We've tried playing soccer a couple times, but the older boys get rough and they push, which ends in much tear. They're really competitive with each other, especially brothers, and there's usually a lot of arguing and yelling. After a while, the other teacher and I get fed up with all of this, and we make them pick up garbage or write lines.
4) I've also started teaching Gr 3-7 Health again, something that I did last year too. There is a great resource binder with a lot of great discussion points and worksheets, adapted to Hutterite situations and context. Class is mostly a big discussion with us sitting around the big table talking. Some days, it goes great. Other days, the older boys will get silly and refuse to stay on topic.
We've been talking about how to be a good friend and how to show respect to someone. Rather than making it another boring, discussion topic, I took this opportunity to make it into a classroom building exercise and make it into an Art project too. I wanted the students be able to tell each other specific things that they appreciated in each other. Although we ran out of time with the painting last week, I will be continuing it this week and will be posting pictures after!
Farm Field Trip
It was a lot of fun, and really neat to see how some of the animals are raised. The kids were able to answer all sorts of questions that we asked and it was amazing to see how comfortable they were with the animals. They knew which ones were docile enough to pet and pat on the head and which ones they needed to stay away from (spoiler alert: it was the bulls).
More Art
Overall though, it always ends in a chaotic mess, but even better than that, it's a fun mess. Yes, I'm tired, but having all those kids being on task and having fun is truly a creative experience for them and a great memory for me.