Reading Groups, Parent Teacher Conferences, and Halloween In Paradise (Which is the Scariest?)

This week was full of firsts. My grammar class focused on prepositions, which concluded my long unit on parts of speech. In both of my classes about two-thirds of the students got either 100% or an A (90% or above). I was very happy about this. I topped the week off by playing "Grammar Rock" from the "School House Rock" DVD that my parents sent me for my birthday. The videos go over all of the parts of speech and as I watched I was proud that I had taught my kids so much. My students loved the music videos, as all children do. In reading class, I used each day of the week to model the different activities we would be doing at each of the reading stations when I am leading guided reading. I broke the class up into five reading ability levels. I made these groups based on my experiences with them in class and how well they did on a sight word test that I administered to them (Dolch sight words are words that one is supposed to be able to read just by sight; they do not necessarily follow the conventional rules of phonics). My five stations are guided reading (with me), rhyming/poetry (where students can either try to come up with as many rhymes as possible and/or can read and try to emulate poems by Shel Silverstein), art with books (where the students do a project based on a book that I have read aloud to them), descriptive writing (where I bring in an object and the students have to describe it using as many senses and different adjectives as possible), and a word/sentence game. The word/sentence game was originally crafted by Mandy. I made a bunch of notecards with the letters of the alphabet on them and the "dealer" draws 4-8 cards (depending on the group level) and the players have to be the first to come up with a word. The sentence game is less competitive in that the entire group works together to create sentences with the huge number of word cards I made. In this game, I am able to incorporate my grammar lessons, the word cards contain examples from every part of speech and grammar lesson that we have had (ie. plurals and possessives). The students loved both of the games. This week, instead of me modeling the activities in front of the whole class, the class will break into the reading groups and switch between the stations each day while I move from station to station (for this week, guided reading will be replaced with silent reading). This will allow me to make sure that every group understands every activity. I am excited to get the proverbial ball rolling. While I was very nervous about getting reading groups started, I think it will actually be very successful.

On Wednesday I had the two winning teams from the end of last term come over to my house for pizza. I think they really enjoyed the opportunity. All but one of the students showed up. It was strange how docile they were, however. When I finally let them in, they all sat down and did not say a word. When I opened the pizza and told them to come get some, they did not move. I told them that I wished they were this good in class! I think they were just nervous to be in my home. They stayed for a little while after the pizza was gone (which was almost instant) and played games and then left in under and hour. A simple and easy prize that I think they appreciated a lot (the picture above is with the two winning teams after eating).

This past Friday, MMS had parent/teacher conferences. The teachers were supposed to be available to give out report cards for their homeroom and meet with parents from 1-5 (we had a half day). I went into my first PT conferences very nervous. I did not know how many parents would show up and I did not know how good their English would be. However, my worries were all for nothing. About two-thirds of my parents showed up (21 out of 31) and I had only a few parents who struggled to understand me. It was a very good test of how far my Marshallese had come in that I did not need any help to convey the jist of what I wanted to say to each of the parents who did not speak English well. Before going to the conferences, I thought I would be very happy to talk to parents of my failing or poorly behaved students, but to my surprise it was really painful for me. It was sad to see parents be so disappointed in their children. I hope that those parents can motivate their kids somehow. On the other hand, I relished in talking to the parents of my best students. I even went out of my way to find the parents of a student my non-homeroom class to tell them that their son could go to college in America if he keeps up the good work (his English is near perfect). During this process I had my first feelings of regret of knowing that after a year I will be gone and that I will not be around to see my kids succeed (or to encourage those who fall by the wayside). I plan to do my best to stay in touch with my top students to continue to encourage them for years to come.

I was excited to see my first "major" international holiday celebrated in the RMI. I was a bit discouraged when I asked my students about Halloween a few weeks ago and many of them said they did not celebrate it because of its anti-Christian implications. I did not think that Halloween would amount to much of anything as a result. But, thankfully, those students of mine who were against Halloween were in the minority in the country. Friday, the students at MIHS made a haunted house and had a party in our shared gym for all young people. While unfortunately there were kids there who were drunk, the students seemed to have a good wholesome time for the most part. On Saturday, one of the women's groups on island had a fundraiser party at a club called Lani (Luh-nai). They club was decked out in Halloween finery and most of the ribelles on island were in attendance. Thanks to a clever idea from Justin, I dressed up as Quailman from the Nickelodeon TV show "Doug" (see original photo here: http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/2/29812/581278-image_2_quailman_large.jpg). I unfortunately forgot the "Q," but the costume was a success. Sadly, very few people actually knew what I was (I knew the Marshallese would not know, but I assume the ribelles would--I forgot that they are all 4 or more years older than me). Still, I did not think I would have a costume so I was happy that I was able to come up with something last minute. Alex and Christina (a World Teach volunteer who was in for the weekend from Arno, the closest atoll to Majuro) went as pumpkins and Eric went as a comic from he Marshall Islands Journal.

Finally, a shout out to Dartmouth. It wasn't until Friday night that I was reminded that this weekend is Homecoming. I hope the 10s had a good showing and let the 14s know how things are really supposed to be (I hope you all ran your 114 laps!). I miss you all.

Bar Lo Kom,

Andrew