Good Boy vs Bad Boy

Most of my kids love to write. I’ve never heard a groan when I ask them to write a few lines about a topic. The other day I tried to progress into story writing. There were a few successes with stories that had a definite beginning, middle and ending. But this post isn’t about those stories, as awesome as they were. This is more about the ‘black and white’ when it comes to kids. The topic I gave them was ‘The Good Boy and The Bad Boy’. Some of the kids gave these boys names , some didn’t, and I was so amused as I went around the class looking at what they had to write about the topic. Vikas in particular deserves special mention. I had asked them to write 7 lines in total but I think he felt that it was far too few to serve justice to the topic. This is what he wrote-

I had asked them to think about the good things we did and the bad things we did and this is what he came up with. It’s such an improvement from his previous writing! But more than that it’s an inside view of the kids mind where everything is so neatly defined as either black or white. Ratnesh made use of his knowledge of opposites to the maximum by using two sides of the page , one with all the things the good boy did, and the other page with exactly the opposite, for the bad boy . Here’s what he wrote about the bad boy. (FYI, Fill wall=feel well)

Just so many life lessons from that piece !!

Teamwork!

If I haven’t mentioned it before. I have 43 kids in my class and I don’t have a co-teacher. So breaking my class up into groups to work on their own was something I was deathly scared of. It seemed like I would lose all control and find myself in the middle of kids screaming and running around. So it was with great trepidation that I suggested we work in groups to the kids a few days ago. They seemed indifferent. I looked closely, but didn’t see an evil glint promising much mayhem in anyone’s eyes , so I decided to bravely forge through. I laid down rules, expectations and then divided them into groups of about 5. It was an art activity that they had to draw and then write about. They chose a leader for their group. It all seemed to be going well. And then I did the worst thing. I decided to sit down and let them work ‘by themselves’. Big mistake. They were confused, yelled out questions, began to fight because one of them wanted to do EVERYTHING and it was just generally chaos.(I give them props for staying in their places though). Anyways. I realized it would take a while before I could let them work in groups by themselves, so I went around answered questions, gave suggestions, explained the concept of ‘Teamwork’ better to them and the kids and I then began to really enjoy our afternoon.

Apart from giving me confidence and opening whole new avenues for me to explore, the kids working in groups help me discover something else. That I had some AWESOME leaders in my class! They delegated, kept the team on task and focused and quiet. I don’t know of anyone that organized at the age of 7 or 8 ! I was so proud of them.

The joy of picture composition

I never really enjoyed writing picture compositions ( compositions based on a picture or a sequence of pictures.) . The same reasons applied to my dislike of storybooks with pictures. The pictures clashed with those that my mind was furiously creating as I wrote or read. The people were different, the scenery was different and it got me really frustrated. I guess that’s why I never really asked my kids to try writing picture compositions in term 1 , even though that was the natural progression of things. In term 2 , after doing some research over the break, I grudgingly decided that it might help them so on the second day I mustered up my scant drawing skills and drew a picture of a boy and a girl playing with a ball with a smiling sun and two smiling flowers. Thankfully there are no records of that pathetic drawing. What I do have a picture of , is what Ritesh wrote based on the picture.

The red tick marks are evidence of my excitement on seeing those 2 lines (cleverly written so they LOOK like 4 lines), despite the spelling and grammatical mistakes. It was entirely his own work and a stark change from the incessant, ‘The garden is nice, I like my garden, I love my garden’ Which they had begun writing for EVERY topic, replacing the garden with my friend, diwali, my class etc etc.

And it only got better, the next day I gave them a picture sequence. Manish wrote an excellent story that was a full 4 pages long! And he wasn’t the only one. I regret not doing this earlier, but in a way I feel that the skills they’ve picked up in the last term are helping them write better compositions so they are much more enthusiastic about it.

So I’ve gone from disliking picture compositions to brushing up on my drawing skills so I can draw better pictures. My favorite are the sequences because I draw them while the kids are watching and I let them discuss as I draw. It’s almost like they are watching a movie as the pictures ‘unfold’. They ooh and aaah and everything! So much fun!

Ingenuity

Like I’ve said before, my kids teach me something new every day. They’re having their mid year exams right now so I’ve had a lot of time to go around while they write and just observe. When I was a kid, my teachers used to tell me that if I wrote with a pencil that was too small, I’d have really bad handwriting. So tiny pencils were thrown out. I didn’t think that meant I was living a privileged life. Hey. I couldn’t use those stubs! I guess living in circumstances where spending Rs 3 for a new pencil versus making do with what you have has to be mulled over, can really bring out the genius in you. Necessity is the mother of invention. So voila ! The new and improved ‘pen-pencil’. ( Yes I know the name has already been taken. You’re welcome to rename it something more creative !)

For those who can’t see too well, thats a pencil stub in a pen casing or whatever its called.

My Best Friends is Raisa

On Friday (a.k.a. Fun Friday) , we spent the hours after break talking about friends which culminated in the kids writing 5 lines about their best friend. While I was going around the room helping with spellings and sentence formation, I couldn’t help myself from smiling at some of the sentences. One girl wrote that she liked her best friend because she played with a bear ( a teddy bear, i’m hoping!) . Another boy said he played ‘bootball’ with his friend  (which technically is the right word as India sadly found out in 1950!).

As i’m walking around, I come across Krishna. Now Krishna is super bright which leads him to be really distracted in class, which leads to a lot of minus points for his team. I’ve tried different strategies, moved him around, but none seem to work. Now him making whichever team he’s in lose points means he’s become quite unpopular . So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw what he was writing .

I was surprised. “Your best friend is Raisa?” He looked up me and in his usual style said “Yes because only you like me. Everyone else is angry with me!” . I felt so bad! So I started with a lot of positive reinforcement with him, made him help me when I was putting up some of the writing on the wall and just generally tried to up his reputation among the class. I’ll know how well it went on Monday. But it reminded me to be more aware of how my point system was affecting the individual and not just the class as a whole. My kids teach me something new everyday!

Baba and Baby

I love my students! I never doubted it, but all of a sudden it’s became way more obvious with the addition of ‘Baba’ and ‘Baby’ to my vocabulary! It’s a habit that I’m trying to shake but it’s very existence makes me pause and wonder just how much these kids mean to me ! ‘ No , baba, not like that’ Lol. It’s not a filler. My anomia hasn’t surfaced for a while now, I know each of their names. I just feel like inserting baba and baby into my sentences. Sometimes the kids giggle, but most of the time, they listen and follow what has been said immediately. It’s not like I had a tough class to begin with. Yet somehow I can slowly feel the mood changing. they understand me and I understand me much better. Like the time I took class when I wasn’t too well. Mid way through class I’d just sit down and they just went on working without creating a ruckus. Something quite different to the situation a month back! And sometimes when I give them time to talk among themselves, I can hear one or two saying ” I like the way so and so  is sitting”.  Just like me! lol. And Paras actually wrote “Smart Pogishun” as the answer to the question “What do we use to listen to teacher” in his Unit test. Awww!

‘Indie’ India

This week is India Week in my class. I’m trying to build up some hype for the coming Sunday when they will all have to come to school. Independence Day isn’t something they understand. When I asked the class what it meant, some told me it was Gandhiji’s birthday. My attempts at explaining the freedom struggle were futile. So I switched to trying to make them understand why we should be proud to be Indians and once they get that, hopefully the Freedom Struggle will make more sense to them. When I asked which state thy came from, the answers I got were ‘Goregaon’ and ‘Malad’ (those are not even cities!) So I gave them ‘special’ homework that they have to ask their mummies and daddies (not their tuition teachers!) to help them with. I gave them a map of India which had the states defined, and I asked them to colour the State they were from in red and the other states in blue. They also had to write two lines about their state. Fingers crossed on that one!

I asked the class to write 5 sentences about India. Apart from the favourite ‘I love my India’ , here are what some wrote.

‘India has many big , beautiful people.’ – Ashish J

‘There are many boys and children in India’ – Prem

‘India is full of Indies’ – Vivek

‘India is grate’ -Rishi

I loved the way they were so enthusiastic about writing! I could just see the movie lines replayed in their heads . I hope the rest of the India Week is just as awesome.