Summer School

Summer has been wonderful. Sure it has rained here, but I still have had my sun and pool time as much as possible. I am enjoying my back patio as I type this!

I have been working in the summer program and it has been nice to teach without all the common core rules. It reminds me of my younger teacher days when we could choose read alouds and were trusted to do what was right for the kids. Sure - having accountability is good - BUT there are a lot of good teaching practices that no longer exist in the classroom. SO SAD! 

Reading aloud is crucial and a lot of teachers in NY are no longer allowed to even do that ! Lucky for me, I have been able to do it a lot in summer school!!

Here are a few cute pictures from my summer school lessons:

I love these books: 

After a read aloud, the kidos did some writing with a prompt: 

 Here is a cute example from one of the kidos: 

 

Here is the second read aloud from last week: 

 

I just love how this kidos added a disco ball! 

 

More read alouds from summer school:

    

Here is a sample of a kidos response. 

So cute ! 

 

 I also teach math. This coming week we are working on the word "greater." Both of my groups - the K kids and the first graders need the practice. Here are two pictures from the chart I made last week:

 

I also have to work on solving word problems with the kids. Each kido was given a word problem on a 1/2 sheet of paper. The kids a great job with addition, so I moved onto subtraction. We read it aloud and then circled the important parts - the numbers and the word "left." We also talked about the label for the number sentence. It floors me that you have to use the word equation with first grades! Here is my example: 

There has been a lot going on in summer school and I am loving it!

Happy Reading!