Playground Rules of Survival

Today's class we started off by discussing the rules of the playground. Our class put together the rules that ruled the playground when we were younger. Rule number one, if you ask a teacher with help about a bully you will be beat up more. Rule number two, retaliate when the teacher is not looking. Rule number three, dodgeball puts you in the hierarchy of the school. Those were the basic ones, I remember dodgeball was one of the roughest games on the playground, but you always knew where you stood!

We also spoke about teaching styles of young children. How some teachers focus on having students express themselves in writing but do not do all the spelling corrections because it is possibly harmful to the students self-esteem. For me that doesn't make sense because the child will learn to spell words the wrong way continually. It is a learning experience so the child should not take it as a mark against them as a person.

I recently spent the day in a kindergarten class, observing both the morning and afternoon session. The teacher had a big board with "Star Words" written across the top, and in the grid like formation were words like he, she, like, it, I, be, and can. I asked the teacher to explain what "Star Words" were and she explained that the children have been reading books through out the year. In those books, are words of high frequency in our language, a.k.a "Star Words". So about each week or so a new word is introduced and the books go up in levels as the year progresses. Children bring the books home and review and read them with their parents.

That seemed to very well. The words they do not know in the books have pictures above the word to explain what it means. While I was there one child picked up a book she had yet to read before, and had many words that had not been reviewed and read it to me. She was so impressed with herself, she went around to read it to everyone! It was so cute!