It’s been a long, tough week. Conferences always seem like three weeks bottled up into two days somehow. There’s just so much assessing, so much paper collecting, so much data updating to be done to prepare for meaningful conversations with parents.
In addition, we had some added stress from our latest U of M visit, which meant that not only was I mentally exhausted from school, I was emotionally wrought out from all that’s going on with my husband. Which is just to say that by the time today, Friday, rolled around and we were officially done with conferences and the weekend was within reach, I was ready to just let today be as simple and easy as I could possibly make it.
We still completed our vocabulary and short reading comprehension assessments on the standard we’ve been focusing on. I’m not seeing as much progress on that standard and I wanted to see if it was just the stories they read last time, or if it truly was still a skill that needed significant more work. We took time, as always, to do some personal reading and personal writing today as well. We read from our read aloud book that we are using to practice summarizing. We also took time to do our weekly “Shout Outs” that has not happened in the past couple of weeks. We shared Very Cool Words, idioms and books that we were super excited about with each other. But when all that was said and done, we still had about 45 minutes of time, with nothing left in the lesson plans to accomplish. So, I decided we would play a game.
The part of speech we have been focusing on the last couple of weeks is adjectives, so I pulled out the game “Apples to Apples.” This is my favorite classroom game, other than it tends to get louder than I prefer. I explained that they would all have noun cards and I would choose an adjective. They had to work in teams and so we reviewed how to disagree with kindness and how to remain good sports even when it didn’t feel like we were getting our way. I took time to explain that sometimes none of their nouns were going to seem to fit the adjective and that’s where it was going to take some persuasion on their parts to convince me it did. Finally, I explained that while I would award points, they didn’t matter in the least and no one was getting any prizes of any kind for “winning.” The goal was simply to have some fun.
I intentionally chose team captains so that some of my quieter students had to speak on behalf of the team. I knew some of those would never have spoken up over the noise and insistence of the other players and by making them captain, I guaranteed they felt included in the game. I told them that this was a kids version of the game and that some of the nouns were things I didn’t know anything about because it had to do with TV shows or video games that I’ve never seen or even heard of. I stressed the importance of talking as a team to help each other with those things we might not all know, which was my way of also giving those who struggle to read or understand English options for getting help without feeling embarrassed about doing so.
And so for 45 minutes today, my kids discussed, debated, cheered, celebrated, admitted defeat (they knew their word of “bowling” was never going to beat “Spiderman” when the adjective was “athletic”!) Every single child was involved and excited. When one team was losing by a lot, I upped the point values for the next couple rounds and “helped” them catch up.
I heard fantastic discussions that helped students determine the difference between “harmful” and “harmless”. I heard students discuss whether “odorous” could apply to something that smelled a lot, but smelled good. And I heard a captain explain that they chose “kissing” in response to “sickening” not because it was unhealthy, but because it was just gross to them, applying multiple meanings to a word.
The room was louder than I ever like it, despite all my efforts, and I felt badly for the teacher next door, but I was absolutely giddy with all that I saw and heard and witnessed in those 45 minutes of “extra” time today. The teamwork, the compliments, the voices of my shyest kids, the kind debating, the compromising! At one point, two boys played a quick game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to determine whose word was going to be presented.
Having just come out of conferences where parents are always asking, “What can we do at home to help?” I wish I could show them a video of today and the value of playing games together as a family. The vocabulary assessment these kids took this morning was nothing in comparison to all the ways they manipulated, thought about and applied words this afternoon.
This was a game we all won at today.
Teaching at 3am 