Weren't these people children not long ago?

With a well-fed, fluffy white chicken staring at me from the front desk, I watched as one of my favorite teacher tricks played itself out.  I usually do this early in the year as it teaches me quite a lot about your children.  On one of the less interesting grammar concepts, I will challenge the whole class to earn a 100% in whatever manner they could, minus using me, or my answer book, as a resource.  Though they don't always need them, prizes make tasks more fun, so today's carrot was twenty minutes of game playing and popcorn scheduled for Friday.

 I love elegant solutions, and that is the reason I love doing this.  What seems on the surface to be just a different way to get some grammar done has a variety of things going on.  First, I find out how your kids work together.  I watch as one or two people take the leadership role and who follows along.  And who does not.  I watch as the new kids speak up and find their part in the group's goal.

Teachers know (or those who pay attention to research!) that kids learn far better from other kids than they do us. 

sigh

All that talking we think is so important is, but when they can hear it from each other, they actually remember it. 

double sigh.  

That means that any time I can get them to teach each other, in a controlled situation, I am doing more for them than just telling them myself.   

Hey, this isn't so bad.  All I have to do is set it up so I know that they are teaching each other the right thing and then I can rest my weary voice!  

Each group is unique, I find.  Your group was eager to get started.  One young lady was ready with her plan to organize the class well before I was ready to let them be on their own.  After about three minutes of sharing organizational ideas in a polite, one person at a time manner, they had their plan.

Great kindness comes out in these kinds of exercises.  When one student faltered, I saw two different people get up to go help.  And bravery.  To speak up and say, "I don't get it" takes guts.  When the two go together, children learn that good teammates will have your back when you need it. While all this serious learning is going on, the kids may not know it, but they are also learning how to find their place in a group; that a group needs leaders and followers, that each role is important and that sometimes the roles are fluid.  

Pretty big lessons for such a goofy looking batch of kids.

...or at least the chicken said so. 

Devious Teacher Tricks

I seem to collect blogs like a cake crumb collects ants.  All of them are important to me, but having several means that some are left unattended.  Since there is so much that is new for me this year, it seemed like a good time to update this one.  

Your kids are an endless delight to me.  I love to watch how they interact with each other and most of all, how they grow in their thinking.  Believe it or not, my first time in a classroom as a paid educator was in 1979 as a teacher's assistant in college.  I shared that little known fact with the 6th graders, and I watched one face as her brain did the math, and then the delightful change on her face when she figured out that I was old!  That look on her face was worth telling that little secret.  

In the few, cough, years that I have been teaching, I learned a few tricks.  Today I put one of my favorite ones into use during grammar.  The sixth graders have to memorize the 52 prepositions in the book.  Memorizing is rarely fun.  I give them a unscramble worksheet to complete, but tell them that, after working on it for about 15 minutes, I will give them the chance to do whatever it takes to ensure that the whole class earns 100% on the paper, and a promise of a reward serves as a carrot.  Then I sit back and watch the fun.  

Though this exercise helps them memorize their prepositions, it really is a cleverly designed plot for me to learn more about your kids.  I like working this way-- creative, controlled, chaos, I call it.  I step back and watch who sits by themselves, who is helpful, who will reach out to the shy one and quietly sit next to them to work and who steps up to organize the class to ensure the objective is reached.  Though they think it is just a fun way to finish a boring worksheet, I learn more about your children that way than I would in weeks of the teacher in the front style of teaching.  I can see already, that this 6th grade class is filled with personality, but also lovely people in their own right.  

It isn't just the sixth, grade, though.  I was talking to Ms. McGillivray today and we agreed that we have a very nice mix of kids this year.  Of course, she and I always seem to say that, but this year's group is delightful in itself.  I saw the 8th grade boys at lunch sitting with some 6th grade boys.  The 6th grade girls seem to move as a cohesive group from table to table.  There isn't room at one table for all of them, so, like an amoeba on a microscope slide, they separate into two tables, but still seem to be one.  The 7th graders have grown more confident over the summer, and the 8th graders are almost taller than me.  They have taken on an 8th grade maturity over the summer and I already miss them, because I know they will be ready to move on before it seems like we are ready to let them go.