The Best Lessons are Unplanned

My class is reading The Case of the Gasping Garbage by Michele Torrey. This book is very cute and engaging, but it's also quite challenging for my students. A few weeks ago we read the first 2 chapters which included a mystery where yeast and flour combine to make a "monster" in the garbage can. Unfortunately, most of my students had no idea what yeast was. So they didn't understand how it could bubble and burp. The next day I threw my lesson plans out the window to correct that. I brought in the ingredients to make bread and made sure that all of my students knew what yeast did.

First we combined 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of yeast and watched it make bubbles.

Then we added 6 cups of flour (plus a little) and a tablespoon of salt. I kneaded the bread in front of the class so they could see it come together. ("Ooooh, my grandma does that when she makes tortillas!" said one of my students.)

We put the bread into an oiled bowl and covered it. The story talked about keeping it in a warm place. Unfortunately, the air conditioning in my room runs at full blast and there are no windows. But, we improvised and wrapped it up with the extra sweater that I keep in my classroom. ("Like a baby" one of my students said.)

While we did grammar and had lunch, our yeast worked it's magic and by mid-day we had a big bowl full of dough, which I promptly punched down, making it "burp" like the dough in the story. Next the students each tried their hand at kneading their own small ball of dough and flattening it into a pita shaped piece of bread. They put their bread onto a piece of wax paper with their name on it to rise for the second time while we worked on answering the questions on this very chapter of The Case of the Gasping Garbage.

Finally, just before the end of the day the students flattened their dough one more time and I fried it up on my electric skillet so that we ended up with a fried flat bread. (It was very reminecent of the Moroccan batbout that I miss so much!)

At the end of the day the kids could all explain that flour and yeast mix and make gas bubbles that form inside bread. So I guess that means that missing out on a few of the things that were originally on the lesson plan in order to improvise this lesson was completely worth it. We didn't read the next chapter like I had planned to. We didn't do our Nancy Drew read aloud. We didn't even get to conjugating verbs. But, at the end of the day I'd rather they understand something very well and build background knowledge they can use later than stay strictly on schedule. 

My First Week Back

Last week was my first week back in the classroom, so I'm in exhaustion mode. This is particularly proven by the fact that I wrote this post four days ago and haven't found the time to upload pictures to it until today. Isn't it funny how we always forget how exhausting the first week of school can be? I'm lucky to have taught more than half of my students last year when I supplied for a teacher on maternity leave. Even though I knew my students, it is different for the students to walk into a classroom that is "mine". In addition, we are doing flexible leveled groups with the students, which was a major procedural change to teach to the kids. But overall, it was a great week. Here are a few of the highlights from the week:

On Monday we created lists of the books that we were interested in reading during this school year.

On Tuesday we saved Fred! This is a great problem solving and cooperative learning activity where students try to put a gummy worm (Fred) into a gummy life saver (his life preserver) without using their hands. This is an activity I learned about at a conference last year. You can download the free graphic organizer sheet from Perdue University.

On Wednesday we began using our Calendar Books and put together our Interactive Math Notebooks.

On Thursday we created made up characters for the first realistic fiction stories we are going to write.

On Friday we chose the countries that we will be using for our Year Long Country Study.

Of course we also worked on classroom expectations, which are centered around the four levels of respect with this anchor chart:

And we learned procedures for lining up, transitioning, using supplies and working in groups. I hope that your first week was (or will be) calm and productive.

Having a Cute Classroom is NOT Necessary

It's back to school season and Pinterest is blowing up with all of the cute classroom set ups and decorations. While I love Pinterest for finding innovative ideas and management tools, I kind of resent Pinterest too. As both a parent and a teacher, Pinterest ups the pressure to be "cute". 

I noticed this as a parent a few years ago. With the advancement of sites like Pinterest, the level of expectation as a parent has increased. Suddenly you're supposed to take monthly pictures of your kids with cute little signs and have perfectly organized birthday parties and knit your child the perfect Halloween costume. At first you do might do it to see if you can or as a way to show off on Facebook to your friends. But then slowly, it seeps itself into our society that it's a requirement. That somehow in order to be a good mom, I have to make a 4 tiered birthday cake out of cupcakes because if I don't then my child will be deeply disappointed and scarred for life. Seriously? My kids are happy with cake and ice cream because it has a lot of sugar in it. They don't care how fancy it is. But we've trained ourselves to think they care. 

Now if baking fancy things is your specialty, great! Share that gift with your kids if you'd like. I personally love to experiment in the kitchen and get an especial kick out of making something from scratch that I had to buy prepared before (cheese sauces, bread, pasta, granola bars, etc.) and I love sharing this with my kiddos. But I don't knit or sew. I don't make fancy halloween costumes. I don't plan over the top birthday parties. I don't use Pinterest to decorate my kids' rooms. And guess what? My kids are fine. They are healthy and happy and they know that mom loves them. There's no need to get into this "I can do everything on Pinterest" mode in order to prove you're a good parent.

The same is true as a teacher. Themes in particular seem to have taken over the world of Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers in the past few years. Teachers, especially in elementary, seem to think that they have to have a cute, color coordinated theme in order to teach their students. There suddenly have to be multiple, professional level bulletin boards and all of the baskets in your library center have to match or the kids just will not learn. Today I even saw a post in a teacher's forum on Facebook that said "I feel so bad. I'm a first year teacher and I can't afford to do a theme in my classroom." Seriously? This will be my 12th year of teaching and I have NEVER done a theme. EVER. My books are in mismatched baskets, labeled by genre, but not matching colored labels. I have no beautiful colored duct tape on my teacher's desk. My bulletin boards are neat and organized, but not fancy. And guess what guys? My kids learn, a lot, every single year. 

And none of my students have ever said "Mrs. Raki, why isn't your room pretty?" Why? Because the kids don't care. They could care less what theme you've chosen. They care whether you care about them. They care about how you treat them. They care about the activities you do. They don't care what color your book baskets are.

Of course there are a lot of teachers who LOVE doing classroom themes and that's fine for them, just like knitting a Halloween costume for your kids is fine for those parents who just love to knit. My worry is the pressure that this puts on other teachers, who don't love it and especially teachers who are on a budget. Teachers already don't make enough money. We spend way too much of our own money already on books, storage, curriculum, and other things that help directly impact our instruction. Adding cute themes and bulletin boards requires teachers to spend more money and more time on things that aren't helping us do our job better. They're often just a way to "keep up with the Jones'" that is disguised as "necessary".

In addition to the pressure having a "cute" classroom puts on teachers, it is also a time drain. There is always so much to do and so little time as a teacher. More and more is being added to our plates every day, taking away from the time we have with our families and our personal lives. Designing super cute classrooms is something you can take off of your plate and still be a great teacher!

For another blog post I've written that go against the grain of "cuteness" that is invading our classrooms, check out: The Purpose Behind Bulletin Boards.