Three categories of Play

Play give students the opportunity to make sense of their surroundings whatever they may be. It is the time kids are given to exercise their imagination by exploring or pretending, and yes rough housing with their siblings and cousins.

As a teacher, I do hope that by the time they get to Kindergarten they have had plenty of play at home, at Preschool if they have gone to one. However, I know for a fact that I have gotten some students that do not know how to play. Well, they just get introduce to play in my classroom.

These are a couple of great books to read to get students going in using their imagination. No, I do not get any commission on any books. You can check them out from a Public Library.

I personally enjoy building Marble Runs, wooden marble runs. I wish I had the space to just build a marble run and let it be. But the majority of the time we need that space for something else.

Physical Play: Children need to play physically, the rumble and tumble kind of play.  Usually done at home, this is the one kind that definitely happens at home. At our schools we do not encourage it, and if there are any parents out there that think that this is ok. It is not. This must happen at home under an adult supervision ready to intervene in case someone breaks a bone. As a teacher, and occasionally as the Principal of the day, all of the issues are with students who get to the Principal's office because students think it is ok to play fight and be physical at school.

Exploratory Play: Children use an object to play. This object can be a toy, a box, a rock, a key, iPad, blocks, etc.

• Block Play have Seven Stages of development. Check these resources for block stages. I like the original Block Play Book, the new edited one, has one stage less: claiming six stages.  I like the original better.
• Another point to notice is that these stages start when children begin playing with blocks, no matter their age. 

1. Stage 1: Carry the blocks around from one side to the other.
2. Stage 2: Stacking either vertically or horizontally
3. Stage 3: Bridging using chairs to tables, tables to benches, etc.
4. Stage 4: Enclosures like a house, patio, garden, a zoo. Whatever their experience has been.
5. Stage 5: Enclosures with decorative doors and windows representing a theater, skyscraper building, a church, synagogue, a court house, etc.
6. Stage 6: Building places they know and adding other elements from other toys, like cars, dolls, stop signs, etc
7. Stage 7: Complex building places they know, and adding other elements from other toys to create a real place to role play like an airport, train station, a zoo, an apartment building, a school.

Pretend Play: Children pretend to be people, animals, and objects around them. There are also stages of development. This is fun when you join in. You get to be a tree or a rock. Fascinating!

• Stage 1: Using realistic objects like a real phone or play phone.
• Stage 2: Make-believe objects like using a rectangle piece of paper and pretending that is a cell phone.
• Stage 3: Social Play including other children. Starting to have a conversation about what they are playing. This stage is crucial because negotiation skills get tested, sharing toys, and taking turns become noticeable for the first time and that is when sometimes "Guided Play" an adult, parent, teacher must intervene to guide children to decide what to do. Students must decide with the guide of an adult. Some students do not need this guidance, only a few.
• Stage 4: Playing fictional characters, e.g. Dora the Explorer, Nemo, Dory, and any other character that students know from plays, books, movies.
• Stage 5: Real acting, with voice changes, and interpreting the real people around them. Children imitating mom, dad, brother, sister, their dog, their teacher. When students have been given the opportunity to play, by the time they get to Kindergarten they are already at this stage. The more mature children in Kindergarten are masters of pretending.

In the 20 years as a teacher, observing students playing, doing, talking, fighting, negotiating I have notice that the stages of development for the blocks, overlaps to other toys. I have always had a set of plastic animals in the classroom, through the years it has increased. My students have gone through the first 3 stages of block play with the animals. I will show you in the next blog.

In other words, the stages of development is not exclusively for block play only, it is also useful for other toys, in my case with the gigantic set of animals we have.

What is your favorite toy now as an adult?

Resources

The gardener and the carpenter by Alison Gopnik

The block book by Elisabeht S. Hirsch

Not a box by A. Portis

Not a stick by A. Portis

Kindergarten Conference 2017

My workshop "Learn to Include Play in your Day"was accepted at the Kindergarten Conference 2017, aka.
PK1 Conference. I was delight it to find out the my session was full! What an honor!
This is the first time that I presented at this conference. So I prepared my Powerpoint presentation but ended up transferring it into Prezi, a website for presentations.

The books here are the books that I read about "Play". Allowing our students to play is important in our Kindergarten, Preschool, First Grade classrooms, and If I was a Director at a school I will ask every teacher to include play in their day at Every Grade----hypothetically speaking because I am a teacher---not a Director nor Principal!

Why Play? One research that came from a 2016 book by Alison Gopnik "The
Gardener and the Carpenter"said that Play produces a Neuro Transmitter called Cholinergic which creates plasticity in the brain. In other words, allowing children to play is creating "a flexible brain". There was also another nugget of information about when children play means that they feel safe and secure.

What is Brain Plasticity? Plasticity is what neuroscientist have discovered about having a flexible brain that can learn at any age, change, and adapt. This neuroplasticity allows our brains to do so.

Why is brain plasticity so important? It is important because it is the ability for the brain to re-wire itself. Without this ability what will happen?

We also know that when children play, they learn to self-regulate, to take turns, to negotiate with others, to exercise their intrinsic motivation, and to be patient (which seems to me that the new kids do not know what that is).

No, I do not make any money on any books that I am posting. I have read them and I have used them in my classroom. But you need to know where the information is coming from and you can read these books for yourself.

I will leave you with this quote from Plato "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation"

Check out these other books and websites:

The National institute of Play

Purposeful Play 

 The Power of Play

 Play

The Block Book










Tools of the Mind

Cyber Monday Sale!

Cyber Monday is almost here!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Bilingual-Blooms

So I will have a sale in every item in my little bitty store at TeachersPayTeachers.

It is so little because it is very hard to work full time, be a mother full time, and write full time!

Wow!

I am so grateful for so many of my colleagues that do manage to post their wonderful lesson plans! Thank you! I really appreciate all your wonderful work!

It is tricky to manage, so yes, I have been writing, and I almost have brand new material to post, so please check my store in the following week, but life keeps happening and family comes first!

So my little bitty store will have a sale starting tomorrow Sunday through Tuesday!
Wishing that every reader that stumbles onto my unpredictable blog has a wonderful, happy, and full of humor holidays, whichever holidays you enjoy the most! I celebrate as many of my holidays as I can so you know!

Looping to the Next Grade Level

Educational Looping is all about the students you are teaching!

I decided to loop this year with my Kindergarteners to First Grade, what a joy! We were able to move on from Day 1 of school. We have gone to school 50 days and they have already grown up.

Their writing is getting more sophisticated, their drawings are getting more detailed, and when we do mathematics their ideas are expanding past the 100 number. I am very excited to have such a great group of students and learned that their families have been very supportive by accepting me as their teacher for a second year in a row. What a privilege! Thank you!

As a teacher, I had to move classrooms which was not my intention, but I had to follow instructions, so I am in a "normal" size classroom but I am definitely "packed".  Which brought me to the decision to create an online Art Gallery since we do fit everyone in the one bulletin board in our classroom. I use Artsonia.com : Strobridge School 
I invite you to visit us there!

Technology Choices

Have you wonder what platform to use about technology? Google? Microsoft? Apple? Linux?

My district has chosen Goggle, however they have provided us with Lenovos that have Microsoft Office 365 as well. They have allowed us to get some training. Before, some teachers on special assignments were allow to use Apple laptops. 

As a teacher in the classroom learning to apply and integrate technology within my lessons, I will use whatever I can get access. So when the Internet is down, we can not use Goggle documents or presentations, so I have to use Microsoft PowerPoint, when my Pc is out of battery, I can use the Apple laptop.

I do have to say that Apples hardly break down. They are truly work horses! There is what you are paying for in an Apple.

As educators, we need to transcend the molds of a platform and move into teaching the students concepts and skills that can be apply in real life.

I have been teaching for a good chunk of time, and we need to connect to the real problems we are facing when educating our future students.

I believe that teaching students keyboarding skills, how to write a document in a word processor, how to create a graph, how to put a presentation together from the photos and video you took, the list goes on and on.

Does it really matter if you are doing these projects on a Apple, Microsoft, or Google? NO! It does not matter, there are just some adjustment in what the programs you are using, just like changing shoes? Right? Wearing boots has a different feeling than wearing your clogs, or tennis shoes.

Life is about concepts and skills you can live on, work on, dream on, struggle that makes life interesting!

So take that technology class your school district offers for free, and join in a education movement!

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a magical, healthy, and educational New Year!

May all your wishes come true, and you are able to reach all of your goals this year!

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Les deseo un año lleno de salud, magia, y educación!

Que todos sus deseos se conviertan en realidad y obtengan todas sus metas este año nuevo!

I am a new teacher! What do I teach? I lost my way! Where do I start?

I have been asked " What do I teach? " this question seven times in the past 6 months. I thought I will write a guide to help out some of our brand new teachers out there and some of our veteran teachers who get burn out, (this is why we have vacations in the teaching profession).

Welcome to teaching! Welcome back to Teaching!

I'm excited to see new faces. New teachers are full of ideas, enthusiasm, and energy! These are great characteristics to have when you starting in teaching. Also, I see my colleagues in the Fall, they are all re-energized from vacations, and they can not wait to get their classroom set up!

Where do you start? Start wherever speaks to you. There is no order at all, ---I just lied---Classroom Management before all. Set your routines, schedules, and traditions for the year before anything else. Then pick a number and reflect below and start with any of them. I use numbers so it helps to know all the possible methods that may help you.

What is Classroom Management?
Classroom management is what the students have to do to be in your classroom. It is also your ability to talk to the students in order to set an order for you to be heard and understood anywhere you are with your group of students---anywhere in the school---in a field trip---anywhere! It is respect. It is an schedule. It is an understanding of what the day will be like in your classroom. Boring? Fun? Scary? Exciting? Puzzling?

If you do not get excited about passing on your wisdom, sharing what you have learned with patience, and your shortcuts of how to learn, or do a project, I will respectfully ask you to leave this profession. It is not for you. I have seen colleagues who yelled every day in their classroom----hint---if you are yelling---you do not have classroom management under control. It is sad! I feel sorry for those students! Can you imagine if your own kids were sitting in a classroom with a teacher like that? I do try to guide my adult colleagues to go find what their passion is, because it is not for teaching!  Well, there are all kinds of students in the world, some fast, some very very slow to get it, and everyone else somewhere in between.

Do you remember your favorite teacher? Why did you like/unlike her class? What did she/he make you do every day? Did you like it? or hate it? Please do not set a classroom to take revenge on all those bad teachers you had at school. What do you want your students to remember you by? What would be your contribution to their education? Be positive, enthusiastic, and creative!

Classroom management are set routines you do everyday to maintain an order so you can deliver your lessons. No order, no lessons! For example: Every morning by the first bell, my students know that they have to line up with their backpacks, before they come in we shake hands and they have to reply to me whatever welcome I give them. Usually it is "Good Morning". Any substitute teacher that I have, knows to shake and salute before the kids come in. This is a set routine to enter the classroom.
Then, my students walk over, hang their backpack, hang their coats or sweaters in a hanger, and come to sit down for me to speak about today---while we are waiting, kids have the freedom to talk to each other about whatever, the rain, their troubles, their siblings, etc. I get my laptop going, drink some tea!
I have a teaching wall. I have the most important activities that they have to know in front of them. It is made out of five pocket charts of different sizes. I am a Bilingual Spanish Kindergarten. So I adjust what I have in this wall. First things first. I set up who is going to be the Teacher of the Day. So every student takes a turn to be the teacher for a day. When is their turn--they (copy me), and delivers the Teaching Wall to the classmates with songs, chants, readings, counting,  every day. Every day.

I teach 180 days in a school year. Look at your contract and find out how many days you teach.

0. Before you can think about what to teach, you must have Classroom Management. If you can not control the students at any given point during the day (inside, outside, in the cafeteria, in recess, in an assembly, in a field trip), you will never be able to deliver all those clever, beautiful, funny, lessons you spent so much time putting together. No student, nor parent is going to appreciate any of your efforts at all! Trust me!

1. Look at the standards for your grade (whether you are using the State Standards or now the new Common Core Standards), which it would give you an idea of the skills the students need to have by the end of the school year. You are responsible for teaching those skills and writing in the report card whether the kids are learning them or not. The magic starts when you figured out how are you going to deliver those lessons for the students to learn.

2. Look at the report card for your grade. If the standards are not a high priority in your School District, then look at the report card (usually, they are aligned to your standards--usually!). Report cards usually have all the skills in all the subjects that students must learn, and it is a legal document for students getting services if they have any learning challenges during the school year. Some district have very strict policies about retention---others leave it to the teacher to decide if it would benefit the student at all. Please remember that just because a student does not speak English-----it does not mean----he does not understand you. Do not retained a student just because he has broken English. Does he understand the concepts? the big ideas? the process to do it? Does he have sense when he writes it?

3. Afterwards, you were most likely given some type of curriculum for Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, English as a Second Language, and Social Studies. If there is no curriculum that the District has adopted for any given subject--Do not panic! You can use the standards or report card as a guide. For example, I know that in Social studies and Science they give you an overall theme for your grade. Like American government which is 5th grade, the Roman Empire is for Sixth grade, Animals starts in second grade,Addition and subtraction starts in kindergarten, etc.

4. How are you going to put it all together? Well, this start with you. You need to look at what make you arrive to teaching? Why do you want it to be a teacher? Was is something you always want it to do? Were you told by friends and family of how good of a communicator you are? Take a look at yourself and answer the following questions to get you going:  Are you a talker? Are you a visual person? How do you learn a new skill? Do you like to play games? Do you use memorization skills like flash cards? Teaching is a reflection of how good of a student you are. So in other words, you will be mirroring your own study skills.

Yes, you will have to break it down, make it fun and interesting, a lot of scaffolding, and tons of vocabulary with definitions. Vocabulary to teach ANY subject is KEY! (This is all about how creative you can get, what kind of materials you have develop? Have you heard of Teachers pay teachers? or Teachers Notebook? These are websites of teachers who have written their own curriculum and their own activities because the Published given Curriculum lacks so much. I write my own. I want to control how to deliver the lesson so that the students get it from the start based on what they have to know for their grade.

5. Another tip for you is to see the big picture. In the adopted curriculum suggest you how to deliver those lessons, whole group? small groups? Hands-on projects? worksheets? books to make?
This is where two bigger skills that you must have come into play: Classroom Management, and Organization.  Yes! It is a cycle----a cycle of inquiry. It starts all over again!

Does this make sense to you? I hope this helps you. This is a guide---just a guide---there are many other thousand ways to go about organizing, gathering, and more importantly Reflecting what kind of teacher you want to grow up to be.
Teaching is a combination of common sense, reflection, pondering, observations, and performance. Some call it an Art, others called a Science. I just simply call it "Teaching".

Share your experience and your own tips, what do you teach? where do you start? I will love to hear your experience. Leave me a comment!