Week 1!

Hello Phoenix Advantage!  John and I are thrilled that you are allowing us to be a part of your school and have an impact on your students (and children!) for the next 29 weeks!  They are quite amazing - we are learning for them each day we get the pleasure of getting to know them.  I thought you might like to know a bit of what we've done our first week.  It was certainly a week to try to get to know one another; to create a safe and creative space.

On Tuesday, the students entered the classroom into an "adventure."  They came in through a tunnel, drew a mural together, and felt the texture of the chairs as they slid across them.  Then, they each grabbed an item off a table and took on characteristics of item (some of them picked up a pencil and pretended to write on the floor, some of them picked up a feather boa and started dancing around, etc).  We played some games, did some educational kinesiology activities to get their brains working (we call it brain gym), and decorated journals that we will be using all semester.  Thursday, we started off with some brain gym and then looked at a poem by Nikki Giovanni entitled The Drum.

The Drum:

Daddy says the world is a drum

Tight and hard

And I told him

I'm going to beat out my own rhythm

We talked about the important words in the poem, circled them, decided what the poem meant, etc.  Then, the students got into groups and did a vocal word association, replacing a sound for each important word that was circled.  After that, they made a motion for each important word without using any sound whatsoever.  The students liked it, and seemed to stay on task rather well.  We played a beginning theatre improvisation game and worked on their journals after that.  These students are so excited!!!  We cannot wait to see how far we can stretch them!  We are looking forward to an amazing semester!  Thank you for letting us teach them!

Kara and John