Addressing the Arts in our classroom :)

My Best Friend Artwork project

I will not sit here and pretend to know all there is about the "arts" but when I feel my students are not receiving the instruction that they need at a young age, I will do all I can to provide what my students need. While reading, writing, and mathematics is extremely important at any age, the art provide that needed break students need to be themselves and enjoy some freedoms at school. Due to the time restraint for "Encore" classes and having to share the time with other grades, my kids are allowed to have music and art every six days (if that much due to benchmark testing for the upper grades - Encore teachers are constantly pulled to help in the upper grades). 


Thankfully, the stories we use in reading provide tons of opportunities for incorporating music (which my children LOVE - my kids think that I am a wonderful singer LOL).  There isn't a day that goes by that you will walk into our first grade classroom and not see use dancing around and singing some kind of upbeat or down-right silly song.  As long as they are finding this style of learning fun and enjoyable, this woman will continue to make a fool of herself with the singing and the dancing.


When it comes to art, my younger sister definitely got the artistic genes of the family and of course, my class is filled with children that can draw MUCH better than their teacher ever will. Thankfully, my class was able to receive art two times a week - well up until last week.  Due to EOG test remediation for the 3-5 grade students, my students will not longer receive these classes so guess who becomes their new art teacher??  You guessed right - ME!!!!!  Scary for someone that never liked art nor was ever good at at.  Yet, I knew that my students deserved the best that I could give them, so I got some "schooling" from my little sister and some ideas from the Internet and a week later, it has become our new favorite time of the day. My students and I know have art lessons on a daily basis and WE LOVE IT!!! 


So if teaching first grade doesn't work out, I may have found my new calling as an ART TEACHER ... I sure hope it works out though :)

"We're All In This Together"

When reading Chapter 2 in “Teaching the Best Practice Way”, the section entitled “We’re All In This Together” has stuck with me.  The authors state that many of your math, history, and science teachers cringe when faced with “possibly having to be teachers of reading” as well.  They are too polite to say it, but they are thinking that their plates are already full with what they are expected to teach and they don’t have to the time to help the reading teachers do their job.  Daniels and Bizar are quick to say, “Yes, you are not primarily a teacher of reading, but you are a teacher of ideas and concepts and procedures and traditions of your chosen subject-matter field.”  You are teaching your students to think, but the road to thinking in any of these disciplines goes through text, whether that means print, artwork, or images.  If students aren’t thinking effectively while they read, they aren’t going to understand or remember the vital math or social studies or art or science content.

            We are truly in it together. It takes an army to educate a child to think effectively.  No one teacher can do it on their own. We must teach our students the strategies needed to gain these thinking skills.  The strategies must start simple as the example of “Terrie Bridgman’s first grade class” (p. 43- first full paragraph) or more complex as in “Tina Peano’s high school class” (p. 43- second paragraph).  Our students must constantly be taught thinking strategies across all subject areas in order to succeed in school. “Teachers are always helping their students go deeper, constantly expanding and refining their thinking skills”.

Welcome to my Blog :)

Welcome everyone. I currently teach first grade at West Bertie Elementary School, where I have been a teacher for five years.  In order to further my education, I am currently enrolled in EDUC 520 (Integrating Language Arts and Social Studies) for the summer session of Grad School.  As a requirement for this class, we were asked to set up a blog that will be used throughout our time in this class.  Stay tuned for future blogs! :)