Elena's Adventures in Hubbell Elementary

           Wednesday, November 9th   ➽Not to be philosophical but...     As it was the first day back from break, the kids were expectedly rowdy. Though I worked with a girl on her test and read with one of my normal students, I want to make this blog entry a little different. It is not atypical that when I come in, the kids are sitting 'crisscross applesauce' on the floor in a group lesson. They are excited to learn, battling each other for who can raise their hand the fastest to be called on. They laugh at the teacher's jokes and share their ideas. Below is a picture of the kids awed by the construction of their new slide:      After Hubbell, I go to my own class, where half the kids have phones out, and many sip coffee- visibly exhausted. This is understandable because many in this class have a schedule full of APs. They're tired and overworked.       But my question is, where is the switch? When do...

  Tuesday, November 1st      ➽Activity of the Day:  Case of the Greedy Gnomes     I worked with a group of 3 for the Case of the Greedy Gnomes. These kids are above average for reading comprehension and mathematics. The Case of the Greedy Gnomes is a multi-day riddle. Each day, these kids would interpret bar graphs. There would be math questions corresponding to the graphs (ex. How many more blueberry pies were there than apple tarts?), and each question would have a letter (ex. the letter e). Following the example, if there were three more blueberry pies than apple tarts, the number three would correspond to e. Above the graph were blank spaces with numbers underneath them. For this blueberry pie/apple tart problem, every blank space with the number 3 underneath would be replaced by an 'e'. When the blank spaces were filled, the result would be a clue as to which of the Greedy Gnomes stole the gold. Thursday, November 3rd       ➽Ac...

  Monday, October 24th ➽Activity of the Day: Free Read      This week is centered around preparing for conferences next Monday, so I took a couple of students off the teacher's hands and had a free reading. These students are on-track or ahead for where they need to be at this part of the year. I let the kids pick the book they wanted to read (both were Halloween-themed) and sat quietly as they read aloud. I only stopped them if they read a word incorrectly which messed up the flow of the sentence, or if they asked me a question.      I was able to see the progression from the students I typically work with to the ones I was with today. The students I typically work with sound out letters when I don't say a word. These two from today use chunks, similar words, or the context clues from the sentence to figure out a word they don't know. Tuesday, October 25th ➽Activity of the day: Crossword puzzle     In the continuation of preparing for confer...