My district runs a summer program both for enrichment and for remedial students. The remedial program runs for 2 hours four days a week. Then students, anyone in the district, has the opportunity to attend an hour and a half enrichment program. I am teaching both and have been for about four years-eventually you lose count.
I spend my days teaching two sessions of remedial classes (one fourth grade class of 12 and one fifth grade class of 7). I am sharing a class with one of my teacher BFFs and the gal responsible for my entire Math philosophy. She is a math wizard and the greatest Math teacher I have ever met. Needless to say, she is teaching Math while I am teaching Reading. The class is full of struggling students, but with the small group it's not so bad. The early mornings, after late summer evenings on the other hand are not so grand!
From remedial reading, I have a different enrichment for a different grade level each week. Week #1 had me teaching Writing through Picture Books to first graders. I only had 8 kids in the class and loved the change of teaching the little guys. We did a theme end activity and writing each day.
Day #1:
We read The Ice Cream King and wrote about our love of ice cream and who we like to share it with. Then we used water color paint swirls as our ice cream scoops and made some cones. I ended with a Brainpop Jr video on how heat melts things like ice cream.
Day #2:
We read one of my favorite picture books When a Dragon Moves In. We made our own creatures who moved into our own sandcastle. Think mermaids, dinosaurs, monster, etc. The kids drew and colored their character and we made our own paper sand castles and mounted them on our water color beach. The writing task included what we would do with our new friend when it moved in. The kids LOVED painting with the water colors so I made sure to incorporate that into each day. OOPS! didn't take any pictures that day....
Day #3:
Or third day was inspired by my buddy Kelly. We read a nonfiction book about sea turtles and wrote a nonfiction essay about the sea creature. We used paper plates painted with water colors as the shells and used a stencil to create the rest of the turtles. A little nonfiction goes a long way.
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| All our nonfiction data |
Day #4:
We read the greatest new picture book I've ever found. The Day the Crayons Quit is hysterical. It had my younger brother and I literally laughing out old in Barnes and Nobles. With this book we examined the components of a friendly letter and wrote letters to ourselves from one of our crayons. These letter were hysterical! Then, because they were dying to paint again I had them paint pictures using only the color crayon that they chose. These were funny and again, me with no camera!
Overall it was a good week. Week #2 has me teaching my remedial classes and Math through Games to first graders.
Stay tuned for the next episode of Adventures of a Summer School Teacher.
Damien
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