Ms. Sharon

The first day of school, I came in early to be sure I had everything ready. I gathered supplies to make name tags, I copied my class list so I would have everyone's name and I gave myself what would become my pep-talk for the day,
"Only three days. Only three days. They can't kill you in three days."

My students began to arrive at 8:00 a.m. and as I hadn't made a seating chart, they just put their books down on a desk and went out again until class began. My class consists of 13 students, 4 boys and 9 girls - a manageable number. Once they were all in class and seated, I introduced myself and asked how many of them were new to the school this year. Two students raised their hands. I then explained that we would be playing a game to try to get them to remember each others names, a game I had been taught by another third grade teacher.

The students gathered in a circle and I explained that they should say, "My name is" and state their name and then say, "And I like to..." and state their hobby. They would then make a movement that represented their hobby. Each consecutive student would then repeat what their neighbors had said before introducing themselves, leaving the last person in the circle with 12 people to remember.

The boys immediately began complaining. "We are at the end. We'll never remember all of that." The girls were so quiet, I could barely understand their names. We got halfway around the circle before I acquiesced and told them that they could just introduce themselves. We finally made it around the circle and everyone looked at me expectantly with unsmiling faces. Kids 1. Ms. Sharon 0.

Next I had the kids go back to their seats and told them that we would be creating name tags for our desks. I asked them to get out their crayons and markers and showed them how to fold their paper in threes so that it would stand up on their desk. The happily got down to work. Kids 1. Ms. Sharon 1.

After they made their name tags, I told them that we would be making up our classroom rules. I asked them if they knew what rules were and why we needed them and got some intelligent answers. I then asked them to give me some rules for our classroom and they all participated and called out rules while I wrote them on the board. Kids 1. Ms. Sharon 2. I was getting the hang of it.

Then I had the kids fill out worksheets entitled “All About Me” which listed their names, hobbies, favorite things, etc. I thought that it would be fun for them to switch papers and introduce each other. But again, the girls read so low that you couldn’t hear them, even when I asked them to speak up. The kids got restless, so I cut it short. Kids 2. Ms. Sharon 2.

After the 10 minute morning break, I divided the kids up into teams and told them that we were going to play another game, also taught to me by the other third grade teachers, called “Math Trashketball.” I divided the kids up into four groups and pulled up the questions on PowerPoint on the overhead (each classroom here is equipped with a projector mounted to the wall that automatically projects what is on your screen onto the board when you turn it on.) The kids knew all of the questions and it was soon apparent which students were better in math. They enjoyed the competition and trying to throw the ball into the trash basket and most importantly for me, the activity lasted a whole hour.

After Math, it was time for computers and I took the kids down and left them in the lab with their computer teacher. After computers, we had lunch so I was free from 11:00 to 12:50 p.m.

I spent my lunch hour preparing for the afternoon and walking across the street to a local restaurant for a tasty lunch of mushrooms, tofu and rice, which I ate with the other teachers in the teachers lounge.

Because the new third grade was put together at the last minute, the P.E. class schedule could not accommodate them all at the same time, so they are divided into P.E. A and P.E. B, which means, instead of another planning period, I have half of my class for an hour and the other half for an hour on different days. Wednesday, was P.E. for group B.

During my lunch hour, I had wandered down into the office to see if there was a list of students for each group, and was told that I could decide. Just send half of them today and half of them next time. Excited, I happily drew up a list of the rowdiest kids and sent them off to P.E.

While group B was in P.E. Group A was in my class and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. I started off by playing Simon Says, which lasted all of 5 minutes and was then left with 40 minutes to try to fill. Half of the three wanted to play games, while the other half wanted to color and read. I decided on the latter. Kids 3. Ms. Sharon 2.

After P.E., I set about explaining a Social Studies game called “Oh Deer,” which teaches the kids about habitats and animals’ need for food, water and shelter. The teacher chooses two students to be the deer and the rest of the class lines up against the wall and decides whether they are food (hands on their stomachs), water (hands at the mouths holding a “glass”), or shelter (hands making a “roof” over their heads). The deer, with their backs to the group, also decide if they need food, water or shelter and make the accompanying gestures. They then turn around and grab the “item” (person) that they need and bring them back to their side, resulting to two more deer. The teacher then explains that the deer were able to reproduce because there was enough food, water and shelter to meet their needs. Then the process repeats until there are more deer than resources and the deer that can’t meet their needs, go back to the other side of the classroom and “die” and become resources again.

I loved the concept of the game when it was explained to me, and it went well at first, but when we got to the point where there were more deer than resources, it was chaos and no one would admit to being a dead deer. So it fell apart. I summed it up hoping that they would retain some of the lesson of the game and resorted to having them do what I had planned to give them as homework as class work, since the game, which I had planned to take all period, only lasted 15 minutes... Kids 4. Ms. Sharon 2.

The last period of every day for my class is Vietnamese, so happily at 2:40 p.m., I left them with their teachers and set about writing up the rules poster, making a “Classroom Super Star” poster to encourage good behavior and planning for the next day. “Only three days. Only three days…”