For the past two summers and this summer again, Stephanie has taught summer school in her school district, usually at her during-year home school. The past two years among her students have been pre-kindergarten kids, many of whom have never been to a school before (on top of maybe knowing no English). She's made summer school fun - a cross between camp and regular school - and has worked with (the first) Annabell, the 19-something former student in her school district who is a native Spanish speaker.
This year the school district - short of money - crammed summer school in two weeks right after the end of school (saving money various ways) and hired as aides and translators (in addition to - for the second year in a row - a second teacher for English as a New Language students - one of Stephanie's regular-classroom teacher colleagues who Stephanie recommended) who already worked in the district. Stephanie usually teaches the upper elementary grades and the other ENL teacher teaches the lower grades. But, in summer, Stephanie and her other colleague switch, with Stephanie getting the youngest kids (K-3 - no pre-K kids this summer). Stephanie has tried to make summer school even more academic this year. But she's found games to play to teach basic math skills, including counting, addition, and - now - subtraction. Today her kids and her used number lines and classroom-made spinners to make a game of subtraction. Some of the kids already knew how to subtract, most kids were in the process of learning it, and a couple of kids were lost. Remember she has some kids who just finished kindergarten who are really still just learning basic English. When I got there today, Stephanie's colleague who is now her aide was reading the kids a story. For about 45 minutes, they played the spinner-number line subtraction game, with me and the aide joining Stephanie in helping the kids. Then, before I left, several colleagues from Indiana University Southeast (see "Another disappointment") who have been helping out, stopped by to work with kids on reading, art, and a play (which I'll miss seeing Friday because I'll be in California). One of Stephanie's Asian kids (from Cambodia) seemed happy to have an Asian visitor, and another of Stephanie's kids recalled that I had been at her First Communion service (see "First communion"). But, by now, many of these kids recognize me, even though only a minority of these kids were in Stephanie's colleagues last year (most were with her colleague). The math whiz of the bunch seemed to be Stephanie's Mongolian student, who started school in the United States a year ago at summer school, when he essentially did not know a word of English. Stephanie's classes are always somewhat chaotic, and many of these kids could always use more individual atttention. But when this activity worked great - as it often did, as usually is the case with Stephanie's classroom activities - the students worked in pairs, cooperating to figure out the spinner and the number line and the numbers and the game and even subtraction - while at the same to the raced to see who could get to +20 on the number line first. One thing we fuzzed over was - when students wound up with negative numbers that would normally take them past zero in to negative numbers, we had them stop at zero, since they haven't learned about negative numbers in general. This must be a problem always teaching subtraction before negative numbers. But, unfortunately, it - nothing goes left of zero - is something they'll have to un-learn. It's almost always fun visiting Stephanie's school. And visiting summer school this summer - just this once (it's all over this Friday) - was not disappointing in that regard.
This year the school district - short of money - crammed summer school in two weeks right after the end of school (saving money various ways) and hired as aides and translators (in addition to - for the second year in a row - a second teacher for English as a New Language students - one of Stephanie's regular-classroom teacher colleagues who Stephanie recommended) who already worked in the district. Stephanie usually teaches the upper elementary grades and the other ENL teacher teaches the lower grades. But, in summer, Stephanie and her other colleague switch, with Stephanie getting the youngest kids (K-3 - no pre-K kids this summer). Stephanie has tried to make summer school even more academic this year. But she's found games to play to teach basic math skills, including counting, addition, and - now - subtraction. Today her kids and her used number lines and classroom-made spinners to make a game of subtraction. Some of the kids already knew how to subtract, most kids were in the process of learning it, and a couple of kids were lost. Remember she has some kids who just finished kindergarten who are really still just learning basic English. When I got there today, Stephanie's colleague who is now her aide was reading the kids a story. For about 45 minutes, they played the spinner-number line subtraction game, with me and the aide joining Stephanie in helping the kids. Then, before I left, several colleagues from Indiana University Southeast (see "Another disappointment") who have been helping out, stopped by to work with kids on reading, art, and a play (which I'll miss seeing Friday because I'll be in California). One of Stephanie's Asian kids (from Cambodia) seemed happy to have an Asian visitor, and another of Stephanie's kids recalled that I had been at her First Communion service (see "First communion"). But, by now, many of these kids recognize me, even though only a minority of these kids were in Stephanie's colleagues last year (most were with her colleague). The math whiz of the bunch seemed to be Stephanie's Mongolian student, who started school in the United States a year ago at summer school, when he essentially did not know a word of English. Stephanie's classes are always somewhat chaotic, and many of these kids could always use more individual atttention. But when this activity worked great - as it often did, as usually is the case with Stephanie's classroom activities - the students worked in pairs, cooperating to figure out the spinner and the number line and the numbers and the game and even subtraction - while at the same to the raced to see who could get to +20 on the number line first. One thing we fuzzed over was - when students wound up with negative numbers that would normally take them past zero in to negative numbers, we had them stop at zero, since they haven't learned about negative numbers in general. This must be a problem always teaching subtraction before negative numbers. But, unfortunately, it - nothing goes left of zero - is something they'll have to un-learn. It's almost always fun visiting Stephanie's school. And visiting summer school this summer - just this once (it's all over this Friday) - was not disappointing in that regard.
1 comment:
Hey, the only summer school in Leon County now is the Summer Reading Academy for 3rd graders who didn't pass the FCAT reading test (level 1 and who are mandatorily retained if they don't pass the SAT10 at the end of the summer program). This year they started a SRA for 1st graders who scored low on the SAT10 but at least they don't suffer from mandatory retention from not passing the SAT10.
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