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Field Notes week 6

Dana's picture

This week the kindergarten was closed on Monday because of a power outage, so I ended up going to the Haverford farm to work with A again. It was an hour and a half of transplanting kale, which was fine. Not paticularly interesting. So I decieded to join Paola and go to the kindergarten on Friday like last week, because I did not feel that I really learned or observed anything interesting on Monday.

Went outside for recess, it was a lot colder than last week so most students kept their jackets on. The students were very excited to be playing freeze tag this week, and we played freeze tag for the whole recess period.Most of the adults were involved with tag this time, and perhaps that is why it continued longer than it normally does? Typically the students run out of enthusiasm for freeze tag after one or two rounds, but this time they did not break off into the smaller groups that they typically would.  
Paola and I had lunch with three students, and during that time we played 20 questions. After 3-4 rounds of 20 questions there was a discussion on some of the spanish 2 of the students knew (how to count to ten) and they learned a word or two more from Paola.The students did a very nice job explaining to us their rules for 20 questions. One student did not want to play, and he did finish his lunch a lot faster than anyone else did. The students were very proud of their spanish knowledge, and at one point a student, James, forgot the number seven while counting in spanish. The other student who knew how to count to ten, Susen, corrected him, and then repeated it correctly for James, who then repeated it after her. It was a lovely example of the students correcting each other with no hard feelings. During this time, and while Paola was teaching the students how to say goodbye, the other student who did not know any spanish seemed to grow tired of listening to the other students (feel left out?) and we played 20 questions again.  
After lunch they move into quiet time, where the teacher plays soft music and the students are allowed to pick something to work on. I walked around asking for students to pick "sight read books" i.e. books that they have the tools to read at least 75% of the words of. They were "checking these out" to take home for the weekend so that someone could read with them. The students were quite adept at reading most of the books, like last week. It was nice of the teacher to offer us something to do, I gathered the impression that she normally would either forgo this or only have time to sit down with a few of the students. It seems that the students have this quiet time most days, only forgoing it twice a week for music and sports class. 
After quiet time I am afraid we had to go. 
  
  
  
  
  
  

Comments

pbernal's picture

I had completely forgotten about the quick Spanish counting lesson we had during Lunch. I also thought it was a pretty cool moment in which they encouraged each other to practice counting in Spanish, but also encourage each other to say it correctly. It was a very kind and genuine moment. And the other female student, Hilda, did not know Spanish, but we all tried our best to include each other and learn other phrases in Spanish. It was a cute and wonderful learning moment.