Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.

My students are OBSESSED with Martin Luther King, and I want nothing more than to encourage them to keep exploring, keep asking questions, and keep learning. We have been studying him all week and my students have shown a maturity while learning about him beyond what I could have ever expected (and I expect a lot out of my students).

Each child is reading an MLK themed text on his or her level for their Good Fit Book (GFB). While the reading level of the text is appropriate for the children, the topics they address are anything but simple. We have had numerous discussions on subjects like: assassination, non-violence, Ghandi, equality, laws, lawyers, the Supreme Court, marches, sit-ins, fair vs. equal, boycott, and so much more. I have been asked everything from "Why is there a policeman behind him in the picture?" to "Why would someone want to kill him?" to "Why do we only celebrate him once a year?" to "Where would I sit on the bus if I lived back then?"...and that is only in 3 days! Several of my students have tried to figure out what they would say, do, and how they would be treated if they lived back then.

We have devoured all of our classroom books on MLK. Today we read over 24 pages of a non-fiction book (stopping to discuss each picture) in one sitting! First graders should not have to sit that long and they usually can't, but they were so interested and curious that we just kept going.

I have to admit it is intimidating to try to explain these very complex concepts to children. My students want more than the surface level that I expected to be teaching about, but I am struggling with answering their questions in a satisfying way, but without scaring them or talking above their head. I am in all honesty having discussions with them that I would expect to have with a class of middle school students.

My mentor teacher and I discussed showing the students some of the "I have a dream" speech. I am going to show this clip:

The vocab is hard and it will probably lead to even more questions, but I believe my students are ready for it. What I really am trying to help them understand is that he was able to make changes because so many people believed in the change. He inspired them to believe and that things could be better. I really feel that at this age, no one explains that to children. My students came in knowing a lot about MLK, but they thought he made all of the changes himself. I want them to see him as a leader, as a symbol, and understand why he was so important--which is that he inspired others to do good things. That is why his legacy lives on. 

MLK has been a huge part of our Social Studies curriculum, but it has also been integrated into language arts. We have been able to discuss the features of non-fiction texts, used pictures to better comprehend our reading, practiced our fluency, most definitely stopped to ask questions to aid in comprehension and later this week we will be doing a GFB pair and share, a paragraph frame, and a text to text comparison. There will be no superficial cloud "I have a dream" pictures for the First Grade Froggers and I could not be more proud!

On a side note, during parent-teacher conferences, one family told us that their child requested to go to Atlanta, Georgia to see MLK's home on their next vacation.

Enjoy your Monday off, but realize WHY we get the day off. Take a minute to celebrate a great American whose legacy will live on forever--my first grade students have given me proof of this. 

The Art of the NON example

Out of everything that I have learned from my mentor teacher this year (which trust me is way more than I have learned in 4 years of coursework and I suspect more than most people learn in their first year teaching), one of my favorite strategies is the non-example.

By our definition non-examples are when we demonstrate, say, act, or talk about something to the children that is completely wrong. We do this to help them understand why it is important to understand or use a strategy or behavior. 

Non-examples can be as simple as saying the opposite of a direction, writing the wrong thing on the board (2+2=5), or acting out or narrating inappropriate behavior. I am amazed at their effectiveness. It is often ends up moving the student to that "click" moment in a new concept and will many times prevent a mistake from occurring. While it is important to learn from your mistakes, often, especially with forming letters and numbers,  it is one more time the child is practicing something the wrong way. The more a behavior or skill is practiced incorrectly, the harder it will be to change habits. Imagine being told that bed time was at 6:00pm every night for the past two years and then one day being told that we actually stay up until 10:30pm. It would be hard to stay up for those extra hours wouldn't it? I know it would for me, and it is just as hard for a child to reverse mistakes.

Between my mentor teacher and myself we probably say or do at least 20 non examples a day. Some are complex, but most are very simple. Some are fun ways to improve behavior or lighten the mood (my students love to be 'tricked' when we cheer spelling words for example) and others are attached to meaningful and further explained lessons and strategies.

Here are some examples:

--Telling the children to line up "as loudly and slowly as possible"

--When working on a Venn diagram or chart, beginning to write in the wrong spot 

--Acting out what it looks like when a child sits on their knees (instead of criss-cross applesauce) with their hand waving and making the 'uuuu' 'uuu' sound.

--Reading a book without stopping at punctuation and skipping a few words.

--Reading a book without any adjectives (how boring is that)

--Reading a book way too fast or way too slow

--writing a sample book starting with "I like" for every sentence

--adding when you are supposed to be subtracting

and here are some non-examples...just kidding!

Inspiration from the 2011 World Community Conference

This past Saturday I attended a conference at the Cincinnati Zoo. The conference showcased the work of graduate students in the Global Field Program and Advanced Inquiry Programs co-created by Miami University and the Cincinnati Zoo. The conference's intent was to celebrate science, education, conservation, and learning...and I can say it did that and so much more!


While I do not have the time or energy to fully explain what I saw and heard, I did write down and pull from the conference program/materials several key phrases that to me, help define the conference:

• Inquiry-driven education
• international partnerships
• success in the protection and propagation of endangered animals and plants
• build an alliance
• community-based learning for the benefit of ecological communities, student achievement, and global understanding
• authentic dialogue
• "That's all we can really do--make a difference where we are."
• time in nature benefits students
• What more can I do? How can I reach them?
• Increase inquiry
• Focus, Purpose, Have a cause.
• Cultural experience
• Diverse cohort
• "We tell students all of the time to make a difference, but you can go all the way from Kindergarten to high school to college without ever practicing making a difference."
• environmental education
• Living with people, alongside of them
• build partnerships with small, grassroots organizations
• children eat 33% more when lunch is after recess
• mindfulness in the classroom--give children the opportunity for a positive break
• Incomparable field experience
• Inquiry as a lifestyle

For more information:

Project Dragonfly

Earth Expeditions

Advanced Inquiry Program

Global Field Program

Cincinnati Zoo

Can you tell I am inspired?

Ready to go back?

My mentor teacher made the comment today that you are never "ready" to go back to school. I know that is the feeling most students have, but I never thought I would experience it as a teacher. I will say the "not ready to go back" feeling is different though, at least for me...

My "not ready to go back" feeling was not because I do not like what I am doing (in fact it is the opposite--I LOVE it!) but it was because I knew there was more I should have done over break. I wish I would have been more motivated to plan more. Sometimes it is hard to plan when you haven't seen how the students will react to something, but I am realizing it is REALLY hard to plan after a full day of school (and class and work and meetings).

It is not that I can't fill up the time in my day, I have plenty of filler work for them to do. It is the well thought out, really experiential planning that takes forever. It is the planning that causes me to run to Kroghetto at 7:30 in the morning, cut "building cookies"game pieces until my hands blister and wrist is swollen, review children's lit until my head spins, and cut a thousand fabric triangles kind of planning and prep that I want to do with my students. Maybe I am too ambitious, but this is how I want my students to learn.

I know the balance will come. I know I will get back into the swing of things, but right now I am just not able to figure out how or when. I am exhausted, but with two days in I am loving internship. More stories, lessons, news, and pictures are in the works, but for now it is time to go to bed!

Graphing!

I love graphing! It is one of my favorite things to teach. I love how many possibilities there are with this concept.  I also love that it is a concept that really grows with students. It is easy to see how the bar graphs we made in our preschool classroom are similar to the graphs we use in high school and college. Graphs are used in articles, magazines, and opinion polls...we see them everywhere! Maybe that is why I like teaching graphing so much---it is a skill that I know my students are going to use for the rest of their lives.

Graphing is also one of the concepts I have had the opportunity to teach in all of my practicum experiences (which might be another reason why I like to teach  it so much). Here is a run down of the graphing activities I have taught and how they grow at each level.

Preschool: Shoe Graphs

During my lead teaching week my focus in math was graphing. As a way to help students learn about graphs, we used a shower curtain and each morning at arrival the children in the class would take one shoe off and place their shoes on the graph. We would then talk about our graph during our first circle time. The focus was to graph by a different property each day (the graph for the first day, shown in the picture above, was to graph by color). This helped the children focus on identifying characteristics, classifying and sorting. We would talk about the basics: which category had the most and the least and how many shoes were in each category. At the end of circle time children would be dismissed by getting their shoes back...a relief for me because I got really sick of the "put your mat away" song!


Kindergarten: M&M Graphing

Any lesson that involves candy is an instant hit with students! Making them work before they can eat their candy it is a GREAT motivator. Every time I have used candy as a manipulative my students work really hard to stay on task so they can get my approval that their work is done correctly and FINALLY eat!

In this lesson, we practiced graphing with M&Ms. My main focus was to help the children learn how to represent a group of objects on a bar graph. It seems easy to us as adults, but children at this age sometimes have a hard time understanding how blocks on a page can really mean real-life objects. When they actually get to construct their graph using actual materials I think it makes the concept less abstract and easier to master.

I started the lesson by demonstrating how to construct a graph with the students. We followed these steps:
1. Separate the M&Ms by color (I bought a few large bags and separated them into ziplocks for my students...I did this opposed to fun size bags b/c I had more control of the contents. I used this as a way to differentiate instruction for the students).
2. Look at the graphing page and find the first color. How many do you have? (I pre-created the graphing pages for my students. We talked about all the parts of the graph during the intro to the lesson. I thought it would be too much of a task for the children to do the writing and graphing and post activity)

3. Count that number of blocks up. Put your crayon on the highest block and color down. (I always teach color down at the suggestion of my K mentor teacher--coloring down will help the children keep the children from accidentally coloring too far. It also helps for later when their bar graphs may not have grids. It also teaches them to look over to find out the value of the bar)
4. Repeat for each color

When the children completed their graphs they raised their hands. My mentor teacher and I would ask them a few questions (Which color did you have the most of? etc), check to see if they had made their graph accurately, and then let them eat their M&Ms.

After the children finished making their graphs, I wanted to reinforce looking at graphs and the data they contain. I created a short worksheet that they completed in pairs. This was a little tricky for them, but it really forced them to look at what their graphs represented and answer questions about it. Here is the worksheet:

First Grade:

We did a short unit on graphing before winter break. The unit focused more on the data analysis side of graphing rather than constructing graphs. I created one of the lessons in which we focused on why it is important to know the question that was used to collect the data.

I started the lesson by asking putting up a chart in with the categories video game, doll, puppy, book. I did not tell the children what the categories were for and asked them to mark the graph. One by one they came up and marked the graph. A few students caught on and asked me if they were supposed to mark their favorite and I would respond "whatever you think" which seemed to satisfy them. When they finished I asked them what the graph was about and I got all sorts of answers (favorite toy, what they wanted for Christmas were the most popular). After some of their answers I told them "Would you have answered the same if I told you this graph was the thing you would  NEVER be allowed to play with again?" and was almost blown out of my chair with their "NOOO!"s. This led us to the discussion that the question used to collect the data is really important.

Prior to the lesson I created a few different graphs with no titles that were all food related (desserts, entrees, drinks). I put up each one and had the children create questions that they thought the graph showed. I would select one of the answers as the "real" question asked. I made sure that one of the questions was "What is the ____ you liked the least"

After each graph had a question that showed what the graph talked about I paired the students up for this challenge: "Use the graphs to create the perfect meal for the students in this class" and handed each group a slip of paper to construct the meal. The students who finished early were asked to create a meal that you "absolutely would not want to give the class". This turned out to be a really fun way to help the students see how data can be used. It also was a good way to show "majority rules".



I am excited to keep exploring graphing with my students! The next stop in the graphing adventure will come during my Geometry unit...get excited!

The Plight of High School Homelessness

I read the The plight of high school homelessness in the Washington Post earlier this week and the article has really stuck with me. I applaud the community leaders who are working to change the lives of high school students and  their efforts to explain how a lack of a stable living situation can affect students in the classroom.

For me, this article is yet another reminder that the life of a student is complex and multifaceted. Students, even the youngest students, have lives outside of the classroom. Many students have worries, fears, and anxieties that affect their classroom learning. It is a reminder to me that all children are unique and that rules and procedures are not supposed to be rigid--There should be flexibility in the classroom to accommodate needs of individual students.

More than anything else, this article reminds me that creating a safe, comfortable environment is essential for student learning. I learned from working at the Wynn Center that as a teacher you cannot possible fix every problem that every student has. A teacher cannot singlehandedly fix homelessness, hunger, domestic violence, and crime, but they can create an environment for children that is an escape; an environment in which children want to come to school; and an environment in which children can feel comfortable enough to take risks.

As students grow older, this becomes even more important. As ECE teachers we have a responsibility to lay a foundation for students so that they value their education, want to come to school, and realize that learning is not compartmentalized into the school day--it is a lifelong practice.

2010 List of Awesomeness

2010 (minus a few days) has been a year of many challenges and even more success. Everyday, good or bad, has been a learning experience for me and is a part of my life. I have spent a lot of this year re-focusing and realizing what is important to me. My list of awesomeness is a list of everything I can think of that made 2010 awesome. I made a similar list a few years ago, and cannot tell you how many times I have looked back on it. Writing and reading the list makes me realize how lucky I am to have great friends and family and to be at UC in the beautiful city of Cincinnati. I am sure my list is not complete, but it is off to a good start. Enjoy and thanks for being a part of my awesome 2010!

- New Years in New Orleans

- Saw Lady Antebellum live in concert

-CMFK fundraiser at Woody’s

- Meeting and mentoring 15 special kids through CMFK

- Meeting all of the CMFK families to celebrate our first year

-Teaching 14 preschoolers at Madeira preschool

- Creating a hats and shoes theme for my lead teaching week

- TONS of snow days to keep me sane during winter quarter

-Skiing with Rallycats

-Talking my way into the Pavilion for St. Patty’s day happy hour

- Green drinks all night long!

- Turning 21!

- receiving an obnoxious, flashing, 21^st birthday pin from an awesome roommate

- Taking so long to make our awesome, non-traditional togas that we missed most of the basketball game

- Seeing AfroFlow live at UC,  meeting the amazing artists, and checking out their tour bus

- Getting pied at XU’s Relay and returning the favor at our Relay

-Selling and seeing I <3 Boobs shirts all over campus

-Hearing Luke Bryan’s “Rain is a Good Thing”  for the first time on a rainy Relay morning

- Relaywood: Lights, Camera, Take Action!

-Genuine awe at the commitment the UC community makes to UC’s Relay For Life in support of the American Cancer Society

-Coming to the realization that seeing the teacher I do not want to be will help me become the teacher I want to be

- 23 sweet kindergarteners

- Field day with my kindergarteners

-receiving great advice from one of my kindergarteners: “Miss Prinzo, sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself!”

- A rainy Sigma Sigma Carnival aka the return of my social life after a not-so-awesome junior year

- Getting paid to walk in the MainStreet Stride and having a ton of fun in the process

- working with 3 awesome PLC’s and 70 peer leaders

- PL appreciation dinner and creating PL superlatives

- Creating and checking off items on the Summer Fun List

- Taking a trip to the Rootbeer Stand (and getting semi-lost in the process)

- Touring Mammoth Caves

-Being lucky enough to take the best dog ever on a few last walks

- Camping out with great friends near Mammoth caves (bobber pong, the ferry, and a campfire to be more specific)
-Getting lost and re-routed in KY only to find a castle!

- Martinis at Lockview ((on a weeknight))

- acting like a tourist at Jungle Jim’s / experiencing Jungle Jim’s for the first time

- finding the “secret” gardens off of Reading Rd.

- Celebrating my first Oktoberfest down town

- signing up for Cincinnati Public Library’s Summer Reading program aka rediscovering my passion for reading

- Volunteering at the Friends of the Library Book Sale and $10 bag day

- touring, shopping, and supporting Crayons to Computers

-Sharing many dinners, cookouts, and nights-in with friends

- starting to get back in shape and discovering that I actually LIKE to go to the rec

-Summer classes aka the path to a REAL double major

- marveling at the ridiculousness of Gatlinburg with my mom

- a perfect vacation to Charleston with my mom (minus the whole Jellyfish and camera thing!)

- an impromptu stop to tour a historic home in Charlotte, North Carolina

- “peer pressure” at football games

- picking pumpkins from the farm

- carving pumpkins with friends

- a Candyland themed Halloween

- Volunteering at the finish line of the 2010 Pan Ohio Hope Ride

- Shopping for a little black dress

- Sharing leggings to ride a mechanical bull

- Laser tag & a giant room a blow-ups for a friend’s birthday

- the taste of Akron food after a long time away ( Tres Portillos, Whitey’s, Swenson’s/Skyway, Wally Waffles, Angel Falls Coffee, AWOK, and Gasoline Ally…just to name a few!)

- being “forced” to hug and kiss Buzz Lightyear by a two year old

- spending 20 minutes hidden in plain sight during an “intense” game of hide and seek

- being lucky enough to have a mentor teacher who is the perfect fit for me

- 20 First Grade Froggers who amaze me a little bit more everyday

- Teaching my first (and one of my favorite) first grade lessons—Community Helpers Bingo

- receiving my first apple from a student

- sharing Engineers Without Borders’ Visual Pen Pal project with my students

- Anything But Clothes Goes 2.0- I mean how often does one get to dress up like a picnic and design clothing made out of Bud Light cases

- joining the blogging community: writing and reflecting on my life as a student-teacher at mprinzo.blogspot.com & learning about the amazing things teachers are doing all over the world

- starting & building a huge folder of electronic ECE resources

- reading 1000awesomethings each weekday and remembering that the little things are usually what make life worth living

- Having my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season!

-Spending the occasional Sunday studying at TAZA

- Finding the perfect planner after a really long search

- taking a trip to a locally-run haunted house

- Bearcat “Bowl”ing trip

- Sharing Thanksgiving in Columbus with my family

- getting my own pan of my mom’s stuffing for a post-Thanksgiving treat

- playing the “stop” game on the BTS

- many shopping trips to thrift stores and book stores to build my children’s book collection & adding OASC favorites to my collection

- Actually succeeding with my New Year’s Resolutions!

- Finally finding new jeans that I actually like!

- Attending a CCM dance concert (and testing out my ballerina skills post-concert)

- Thursday nights at Murphy’s

- attending the Harry Potter midnight premier and LOVING the movie

-attending “The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything” and “The Thirteen Nights of Halloween” Reader’s Theater performances

- Flying & riding in an experimental aircraft

- Meeting all of the families of my students at Open House

- enjoying the occasional walk to Fairview in nice weather

-Strawberry shots!

- taking roommate trips to Cincinnati “beaches” (minus the sunburn!)

-Discovering Q104 does not play Christmas music!

- Spending a relaxing, yet somewhat productive winter break in Akron

- Receiving many complements from the seniors at Copley Place (hello ego-boost)

- Bingo, Skip-bo, Bananagrams, cookies, coffee, and wine for a satisfying Christmas & Christmas Eve

- “Surprising” my mom with a Christmas gift

- Catching up with the Bonacci family after Christmas and getting a whole bunch of "new' teaching stuff as a donation from their family

- Good coffee, a Sunday night bar with no girly drinks and a bad band, and great friends

- Celebrating Melissa's 22nd at BlackFinn with the girls and some new "friends"

- NYE in Fountain Square...crowded bar, no champagne, fireworks, awesome weather, an awesome bar with no cover, and ridiculous walk through the parking garage

-receiving the gift of extra time to focus on school through the Pearl M. Wright Finalist Award