Friday, October 18, 2013

120, bilingual first grade.  I took a group to the atelier for the first time.  We painted their portraits.  They loved it.  They were mindful about how they held the brushes and really tried to stay true to the effort they put into the portraits (this was their third draft.)  I'm really proud of the first one, as this student didn't want to draw a portrait in the first place, and he didn't want to paint it today, but it ended up being really successful and he left with the biggest smile on his face.

116, bilingual second grade.  I took a second group outside to study clouds.  They had the benefit of seeing their classmates' cloud mural and between that, the study of clouds and a desire to one up their friends, they made an incredible cloud mural on the first try.  Their classroom will now have two walls with clouds.  

108, monolingual first grade.  I pushed in yesterday and today, trying to get ideas for a project.  This is the dialogue I documented as students tried to turn their classroom kitchen into a restaurant, as part of their theme of community helpers and rules. 

108 is talking about community helpers in various locations.

S1- Sometimes you give the person at mcdonalds money and you buy the food. They give you your food on a plate. No, on a tray or in a bag.

S2-The chef cooks the food and the waitress and waiter bring it to you.

Teacher- The kitchen group will be making a restaurant for their community experience at the stations today.

S1-This is a Chinese restaurant.

S2- No, it's a Mexican Chinese restaurant.

S1- I'll be the waitress and you be the customer and they are the chefs.

S1- what would you like today?

S2- I'm the waitress

S1- A boy can't be a waitress.

S2- I’m the waiter.

S3- I want a taco.

S2- She wants a taco.

The waiter goes to the kitchen to tell the chef. Then he, the waiter, starts to "cook."

S4 is the chef, but she seems to be playing alone and not part of this game. The waiter brings the customer a rubber taco. She eats it and decides to be a cook and a waitress, too.

A fifth student is acting like a bus girl, setting the table, cleaning it up and resetting it. She seems uninterested in the game, too. I’m seeing parallel play.

A teacher's assistant comes in and they ask her what she'd like to eat.

S5 decides she's the hostess and sits the new customer at the table.

S2 takes her order to the chef. Now that they have a real customer, everyone is interested in their jobs.

Continuation the following day…

We talked about yesterday's experience and how the roles in the community all need to be filled, because each role is important.

Right away, the restaurant had a couple of chefs, a waitress, a cleaner, and no customers. This concept- that all roles are important- is something they are struggling with.

I thought it might be more fun if they had a menu to order from, so I mentioned this to the students and the art station decided to write and draw some menus. This ended up being awesome because they worked on their ELA skills while contributing to their community, which made them feel like they had a true purpose.

Meanwhile, in the restaurant, student 1 was a customer for a few minutes, but then decided that there was a huge fish tank in the restaurant, so the fish he ordered to eat then swam around the pretend fish tank. 

An art table student came over to see what the restaurant offers. These graphic designers (an artistic profession, NYS art standard 2) were doing a great job at being community helpers.

At this point, the restaurant turned into a fish market, as student one started selling fish out of the fish tank for pretend money.

Two students decide to be Santa and Mrs. Claus and they would be the customers. The graphic designers presented their menus to the restaurant staff and the staff approved the designs. This combination of character play and menus made the customer a desirable role. The fish market staff became the chefs, and we only had one waitress. This is a functional restaurant now.

118, monolingual second grade. I took the last group outside to draw a part of our community.  We chose Elk Street, looking at an old factory building, houses and trees. The students chose a part of the street to represent.  This was a very hard drawing exercise, harder than the other subjects, because there was so much to take in.  I think they had a good attitude and really gave it a good shot.  I will have to address viewpoints again, as I got great viewpoints of the factory and houses, but the cars were difficult to place and I see some bird's eye views.

Our view