February 20, 2008–Schaenen

Fourth grade, first hour

I brought in the big box of gently used books donated by Leo, my nephew in New Jersey. We opened it, read his cute note, and then I laid out the books and invited the kids to browse and choose one that looked interested, one that wanted to keep. Then they read for a while, wrote thank you notes, and we played the word guessing game on the chalkboard for the last 15 minutes.

“It has a “t” on the top of it. It is a big building and people pray in it.”
Answer: The Revolutionary Center, a food pantry place in the north city.

“He a person. He a best. He come from the dead.”
Answer: [Some wrestler.]
Interesting thing: Above was how the boy wrote his clues, but when he READ them LOUD he said, “He’s a person. He’s the best. He come from the dead.”
This is evidence of style shifting from written to oral. But also, there is typically instability from one domain to another for this child, who (and this has nothing to do with standard/Ebonics, I don’t think) has some kind of processing block when it comes to getting his EXTREMELY fluent oral verbal skills to appear on paper in writing. Letters and words go missing no matter what code he’s writing in.

A funny moment: one child, having written the thank yous and seeing everyone else had, too, was eager to play the game. He said, “We ready.” and again, “We ready.”

Me: “We ready?”
Second student: “We ARE ready.”
First student: “We ready.”
Me: “We ready?”
Third student [to me]: “Please don’t start that.”
Me [smiling]: Don’t start what?
Third student: “Makin us switch back and forth.”
First student: “We ready.”
Second student: “We ARE ready. How many times you going to say that, man?”

This was all very fast….an indication of how second nature this subject is in classroom conversation–so second nature that I have students utterly bored by it, now, like “we get it, we get it, already.”

Fourth grade, second hour

We did the same thing but I laid the books out on a table. They chose books and read a while to themselves and then drafted thank yous. The thank yous were all very different – some involved crayons, glue, cutting the paper, turning it sideways and writing as if it were a commercial card. Many kids included facts about Leo I had mentioned, that he loved to play tennis and baseball, that he lived in Montclair. I forgot to mention that I passed out nice patterened paper to use instead of plain lined paper. Some kids wanted to use both so I let them.

A cute exchange with AW, who was play-bragging about his dad who lives in a mansion. I had said I wanted them to maybe watch less TV this week so they had time to read their new books, less video, etc etc. AW was in the middle of a long signifyin about his rich daddy, and he said, “I had my butler read my book while I be listening to my MP3 player.”

AW: My daddy live in a mansion. We got a maid, we got a butler.
AP: You got a limosine?
AW: Yeah.
AP: We got two.