Volunteering in the Classroom

Ice-Cream Making with Preschoolers 
This week I brought all the equipment and ingredients to make homemade ice cream into M's preschool class. Her classmates were abuzz with the excitement of a parent there with a new activity. They all gathered around a table and guessed the ingredients in ice cream (revealing they had not had much experience making it in the past). Each had a turn whisking the milk and sugar together. The teacher got them counting in unison as they whisked, "1, 2, 3, 4, ...." all the way to 20 and then they passed the bowl along and repeated this process. Everyone wanted to smell the open bottle of vanilla extract when I offered. Two kids shared the job of pouring in the heavy cream. M was at my left elbow and dashed to fetch or throw away things for me as needed. I got out the ice cream bowl with its thick-walled frozen sides and they all felt it and said "Brrr!" Then we poured the mixture in, turned the maker on, and let it spin for twenty minutes.

W had come along with me for this morning helping out in preschool, and so while we all waited for the ice cream to be ready, he got in on the volunteering too. He was so excited to read the class some ice-cream-themed picture books: Curious George Goes to an Ice Cream Shop, the story "Ice Cream" in Frog and Toad All Year, and the Elephant and Piggy classic Should I Share My Ice Cream? He had practiced reading these aloud ahead of time at home, in particular the trick of how to physically hold the books so the kids could see the pictures while he read because, as he said, "I always hated when teachers didn't show the pictures until after they read the words." He was funny and expressive and did a great job. M was feeling extra excited that both her mom and brother were there, and took a proud spot next to this big guest reader the whole time. Her preschool classmates were a wonderful audience. W got compliments from his former preschool teachers. It felt like a good use of time for us all.

I did another bit of preschool classroom volunteering earlier this year:

Drawing Lessons with Preschoolers
We like Young Rembrandts drawing lessons on YouTube-- one- to five-minute videos demonstrating how to draw... a kitten/an elephant/Santa/a snowman/fish/a butterfly, etc. The videos are perfect for the stage my almost-5-year-old is at, though plenty of them would be good for older kids as well. We like to draw as we watch, pausing the video after each step to draw that portion on our own papers, and then tapping "play" again. "Can we do a drawing lesson?" is a regular thing M asks to do at home. She loves them. (They've helped her grow as an artist too. She drew a bunch of hot air balloons in a picture for her grandparents a couple of months ago. I asked what the little square on each one was and she said "That's where the light is reflecting!")

So after running this by the teacher who was all for it, I brought the iPad and some of these bookmarked drawing videos to share with her classmates. They joined me at a table a few at a time to have their turn. (M of course stated she wanted to stay with me the whole time, and the teachers were great about that.) The experience was a great reminder of the vast developmental differences among three-, four-, and five-year-olds within the preschool spectrum, not to mention individual differences. Some gripped the marker with their whole first rather than their fingers, and some finished drawings were more identifiable than others. But we had a great time and a lot of cute drawings went home. Here's some of M's creations from those drawing lessons: 

Thoughts on Volunteering
I've always tried to participate in my children's classrooms at least once each school year. Like most working parents, this took effort and planning. I set aside at least one of my three annual personal days so I could join in on a field trip whenever the opportunity arose during the year. I often asked if I could help out with something in the classroom on the day before Thanksgiving, since that was one day I could count on having off while my kids were in school. I found ways to get into school over February break when my break was a different week than my kids'.

It meant so much to me to get a better sense of the tone of their room, and to be able to picture them where they spent their days. It's always been so rewarding to see how excited they feel about Mom or Dad helping out for a day. To this end, over the past several years, I've taught preschoolers how to make gnocchi and how to string Cheerio necklaces on licorice strings, I've helped kindergartners plant seeds (with M a year old in the Ergo baby carrier on my hip), I've assisted second graders with a tricky sewing craft, and I brought our pug in for third-grade show and tell. My husband has helped work on hiking trails and run a holiday gift-making station-- at which he felt a little overwhelmed but still had fun!

This year, one of the joys of my more flexible homeschooling schedule is that it's easier to be more a part of M's preschool world...It's definitely easier this year, BUT-- I've always done it. And if I could get into my kids' classrooms when I had a teacher's schedule, I bet most parents can make it happen, and I recommend it! (One thing I've found-- and I speak as both a parent and a teacher-- is that it helps for the parent to just reach out to the teacher to suggest a time frame they are available, or an activity they would be willing to share, rather than waiting for an invitation from the teacher.) It's all about connection. It made me feel I knew teachers and peers better, I was better able to ask my kids questions about school, and more able to visualize the few stories I got from them about school, after I'd spent an hour or so there with them during school hours myself.

Studying our State

We have been taking a class for homeschoolers once a month this year through the New Hampshire Historical Society. One highlight so far was when the whole class went on a tour of the New Hampshire State House.

It's an impressive building, with a golden dome we've always glimpsed from I-93, and a golden eagle on top.

Right after entering we were in the Hall of Flags, with dozens of flags in glass cases around the room from various battles as far back as the Civil War, many of them in tatters and with bullet holes in them. For my battle-fascinated boy, this was a highlight.

Nearby was a wall plastered with bumper stickers and campaign buttons signed by presidential candidates. We saw the business-like Secretary of State's Office, where all presidential candidates go to file to be on the primary ballot. We get pretty excited about our early voting around here, so these spots were cool to see.

Secretary of State's office at the end of the hall

We got to sit in the 400-seat chamber of the House of Representatives (NH has the largest number of representatives of any state). Representatives get paid so little, they are essentially volunteers, and the one who hosted our group in the chamber was very excited about his job and the lively debates they have there. He said that representatives usually try to host groups from their own district when they come for a tour; when he heard we were a bunch of homeschoolers (from all over the state), he wanted to host us because he was homeschooled himself. He spoke warmly about the opportunities that homeschooling provides. W got to see the little voting buttons that go with each seat so that members can vote electronically. "What will happen if I touch this right now?"

We also went into the much fancier and smaller Senate chamber. Each kid got to sit in someone's labeled spot, and W was in the place of the "Sergeant at Arms," who sits at the front of the room facing the rest, in charge of keeping order and of who comes and goes. There were giant historic paintings of Daniel Webster as a child and of the first Dartmouth College graduation in this room. We also learned we can watch the New Hampshire Senate in session here. (We tuned in just last week and watched senators debating a proposed requirement to teach about climate change in elementary and secondary schools! It was so cool that we happened upon something so relevant to a kid. We had a great chat about it, analyzing the senators' arguments, and their debate styles.)

We visited the Governor's Reception Room and each kid got to sit in the Governor's chair at the head of the table in a meeting room.

Governor for a minute

There were a couple of fossils we got to see in some of the marble floors in the hallways. And W's favorite thing perhaps was some dioramas in an alcove off the gift shop that showed scenes from some regional historic battles.

The Capitol tour was great, but we've enjoyed our monthly Historical Society class in other ways, too. It's the only type of official group learning we've done this year. I haven't participated in other homeschool co-op classes, partly because there are not a lot of options where we live, but mostly because I was excited to get to teach my son this year and felt qualified. But I was happy to lean on others a bit for the required topic of our state history/culture/resources/economy/politics/geography, and I have been learning myself!

Here are some other things we've liked about the class:

Collective Learning
The class gives him the chance to be in a classroom of sorts. It's interesting for me to stop being the teacher on these afternoons and to step back and observe how he does. The staff who run the program really love their state and are full of stories. W hangs on every word of a good story, learns through stories, and he remembers stories. Whether it's the story of Darby Phelps, the first European to climb Mount Washington (a not terribly respectful thing to do at the time, as he was intent on disproving the native belief that it was a holy place), or the fact that tannic acid from tree bark was used to tan hides in the days of the Abenakis, he remembers all the interesting details.

One thing I think W likes about the class is the chance to revisit the familiar old feeling of learning with peers, as he raises his hand to answer lots of questions or tries to win at a game. He often ends up helping another student who is younger or who doesn't know as much about history as he does. In these ways the class is usually a bit of an ego boost for him, and is different from learning at home when he only has himself and his goals to compare himself to.

It has been nice to see W gradually come to feel a part of the peer group in the class, the only time he sees a group of homeschoolers en masse. I observed W in a cluster of boys around his age for several minutes the last time we were there, laughing and talking and pointing things out around the room as they put their heads together to try to figure out the activity they were immersed in.

Laughing in the middle of a cluster of homeschool peers

Big Memorable Activities
There have been a couple of awesome activities the instructors clearly devoted a lot of preparation and materials to, things I could not have done at home, that I think will stick with W for a long time.

One activity followed a lesson about New Hampshire and the Industrial Revolution and it had stations kids rotated through for different types of production: craftsmanship, piecework, and assembly line. There were props to represent chocolate truffle production: glass blobs for nougat, clay for chocolate, little foil wrappers that had to be cut, ribbons to be tied, labels to be adhered. Kids had the same length of time at each station. As craftsmen, they individually created the whole product from start to finish and then started on the next. At the piecework station, each child had one specific job to do in the process. Sometimes they had to stand around waiting for the people in front of them to finish their jobs and sometimes they ended up with a backlog; meanwhile the "agent" was running around shouting orders and out of breath. At the final station they experienced assembly line work: each child had a job-- rolling, wrapping, putting on the sticker-- and the assembly line belt kept moving whether they were done or not (a loop of fabric around a long table that got pulled ahead every few seconds). They got a first-hand experience with the comparative speeds of production, the quality that resulted, and the pleasures and frustrations for individual workers doing each type of work.

On a different day, after learning about immigration to New Hampshire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, kids went through an immigration simulation, as if they were immigrants having just arrived, not speaking the language, not understanding the directions, having to undergo multiple inspections and hold-ups, and having to figure it out as they went along. (We had recently read a couple of articles about Ellis Island and this magically brought those descriptions to life.) W was as engaged as he could possibly be.

Next month I am looking forward to seeing the kids play some geography games with a giant map of New Hampshire they can walk on.

Artifacts
It's neat to be at the Historical Society because often after giving us some background information about the topic for the month and showing some images and passing around a few novelties, the instructors lead our whole troop upstairs to the museum gallery to see relevant artifacts. We've been intrigued by a drum found on the Bennington Battlefield, a 500-year-old dugout Abenaki canoe found in the bottom of a lake, several powder horns that predate the Declaration of Independence, many campaign signs and memorabilia, a Revolutionary War flag showing interlocking rings of the thirteen colonies. Even looking at online images at home would not have been the same as seeing, and in some cases touching, these objects in person.

Flexible Learning Environment
This class is very comfortable and homeschool-friendly. It's run by a long-time homeschool parent. Kids can sit on the floor or at a table for the presentations, whatever they want. Some parents drop off and some stay and participate. Some kids have/need parent help and participation with the activities, some don't. Some siblings seem to need to stick together when the kids count off to split into small groups, so the instructors just adjust the counting accordingly to allow this. The class is not ideal for my preschooler but one month we didn't have another option and she joined us. The class is for a certain age range but much younger kids are welcome. One toddler attends every session and plays with blocks with his mother in the corner and it's not too distracting. We leave with lots of optional resources each time. There's no formal assessments; it's up to each parent to take the content from each class and do with it what they will.

A Little Culture
Just driving to Concord, our state capital, feels like the big city to my son, so going there is a little cultural experience in itself. Sometimes we've taken the opportunity to visit an interesting place nearby before the class, like an art museum, a good lunch spot, or the time we checked out the NH Audubon Society. We've gotten familiar with the statues and monuments on the grounds of the State House, as we generally park on one side of it and walk past it to the also fancy Historical Society building. W likes to walk by the Governor's two marked parking spaces every time in hopes we will spot him or his security detail one of these days. It's only a little over an hour away but every month he says things like, "Gosh I can't imagine living in the city....you wouldn't have a yard, and there's so much traffic, and it's so much warmer, there's no snow...." I point out to him that there is plenty of Concord that isn't like the few blocks downtown that we visit, and that Concord is pretty small by city standards. But it's fun to get to know a polished little section of the closest city to us-- the best place we've found to park, the burrito place we've found to pick up an easy take-out dinner, the other large and imposing buildings, including the post office, courthouse, and New Hampshire State Library (the source of so many of our audio books).

Historical Society

New Hampshire State Library

A display of New Hampshire state symbols. I learned one of these last summer, when I asked our neighbor if he would cut down some overgrown, badly located lilacs for us...he really didn't approve of this idea, telling me, "well, they're the New Hampshire state flower!" (And they're still standing.)  

The Words He Needs

When W was in school last year in third grade, sporadically he'd come home with a list of words to study for a spelling test. The teacher gave the same list to the whole class. The words were either based on a content-area theme-- wide-ranging words with no common spelling thread (e.g. "Jamestown," "settlers," "colonial"...)-- and/or far too easy for him. I gasped when he'd bring home actual first-grade-level high-frequency words that my own students were working on at the time: "what," "then," "with," "little"... As he said himself, many of the tests were "so easy because I've known how to spell those words since first grade." I have no doubt that some of his classmates needed to solidify words like "what" and "then," and those students should of course get the words they need to work on. But so should every kid. W mastered those long ago. Fair is everybody getting what they need. For W, the spelling words he was given last year were inappropriate, and unfair. One of my big frustrations with the school was that as a general rule they didn't differentiate. Differentiation is meeting students at their individual levels, giving each student what they need, the right amount of support and challenge-- not pretending that one size fits all. There are some ways I wish his school had supported him more, and there are many ways I wish they had challenged him more. Spelling instruction is one of the latter.

Spelling was one of the more straightforward, concrete ways I changed his educational experience this year in homeschool by making it an appropriate challenge for him-- by giving him words he actually needs to study and learn. He has said that he likes having harder words this year.

This is how we do word study, using some resources from a program called Words their Way:

Finding his Level

In the beginning of the year I gave him a spelling inventory-- a test. Like most skills, there are stages of spelling ability. There is a pretty established sequence of skills that students should get systematic instruction in as they progress in word knowledge. I asked him to spell a bunch of different words that sampled a variety of word features on the spectrum of beginning to advanced ability: short vowels, digraphs (th, sh, ch), consonant blends (bl, str, sp, cl, tr...), vowel combinations (oa, ie, ai, silent e, igh...), words with suffixes or prefixes added, complex consonants (like kn, tch, dge), words with Greek and Latin elements. Then was the fun part: looking not just at how many words he got right, but at the categories of word features that he either had mastered or still needed to work on. (For example, with a word like "frightened," there were several aspects of that word that he could have gotten right or wrong, including the "fr" blend, the "igh" in the middle, and the suffix "-ed.") When I tallied it all up, the results affirmed my belief: W was well along on the progression of spelling skills. There were certain word features he got right every time. The sweet spot was the categories of word features where he was sometimes correct, but not consistently. For him this happened with features like: harder suffixes like "-ate," and some prefixes and suffixes like "-ance," and when to use "-sion" vs. "-tion." This was where his spelling instruction (and spelling lists) needed to start, where he deserved to have teaching and have the opportunity to grow as a speller. So with these Words their Way tools to help me, I determined that he was toward the end of a certain stage in his spelling knowledge (the "syllables and affixes" stage) and I bought a book of word lists to help students focus on words with those sorts of word features, and we've been progressing from there and into the next stage ever since.

Noticing and Sorting
Each week I give W a list of words from a book that has intentionally curated words that help students hone in on word patterns and spelling rules for the stage he's at. The words all share a feature of some sort. He cuts them apart, spreads them out, and I ask what he notices about the words. A recent list he worked with had all words with either "ie" or "ei" in them. He has to sort the words according to a system he thinks of, and eventually according to certain categories based on their spelling. These were the groupings for the ie/ei word list: "ei" sounding like long a, "ei" sounding like long e, "ei" after c sounding like long e, words with "ie" sounding like long e, and finally an "oddball" group. The oddballs are words that have the same features as the rest of the words in the list but don't fit the rule. It's important to recognize the oddballs for what they are, and to be able to just memorize that these are different. ("Mischief" was the oddball in this particular spelling list because it has "ie" and yet in that word it sounds like short i, which is unusual.) Then he needs to try to articulate a generalization, or spelling rule, to remember which words are spelled in which ways and why. In this ie/ei word list, the generalization included something like: "i before e except after c, and except when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh" (though most generalizations are not a rhyming jingle like that).

Some lists focus more on meaning. As students get older, they need the tools to be able to make an educated guess at what an unfamiliar word means. Being able to identify the base word within a word, or recognize the meaning of a prefix or suffix or Greek root can be really helpful. One list he had was homophones (sound the same but spelled differently, like "medal" and "metal," "their" and "they're" and "there"); one list he had was homographs (spelled the same but used/pronounced differently, like the noun "desert" and the verb "desert"); he's had lists with prefixes and suffixes like bi-/tri-/uni-, -less/-ness/-ful, mis-/dis-/pre-. We have lots of neat little conversations when examining, sorting, generalizing, and getting to know words this way.

Defining
During the week we try to do a couple different activities using the current list of words he's working with and to extend his understanding of that spelling rule. He might try to use the words in a sentence. He sometimes does a word hunt, trying to find in books or magazines other words to add to his list that fit one of the categories he's working with (finding more words with "cei" in them, or more words with "i" before "e"). If he finds words that should fit but don't fit the rule, we talk about that and make note of that as another oddball. One thing I've done regularly is had him look up in a dictionary a few of his spelling words each week. (One could argue that his generation won't need to know how to use a dictionary because they can just Google a word they don't know, but I wasn't ready to accept that yet. And I felt like it is still handy in life to have a working ability with the concept of alphabetical order.) I found he definitely needed practice in using the guide words at the top of each dictionary page to become more efficient and fluid looking up a word. And those are just the skills in getting to the word; after he finds it there are the multiple definitions and parts of speech and funny little marks to get used to and discuss. So I've liked how use of the dictionary has tackled some knowledge and skills we might not have gotten into otherwise.

Test

At the end of the week I give him a spelling test. W actually likes tests. I think he likes the chance to prove what he knows, and he loves the feeling of being right (and hates the feeling of being wrong...). It's one of the few times when he gets a concrete "grade" with homeschool and he likes it; if he gets all the words right, instead of saying he got 100%, he likes to write "A+." Every so often, he does a cumulative review test that samples words from all of the patterned lists he's worked with so far, and that provides a nice reflection on all he's learned.

Spelling, or word study, is something we only spend fifteen or twenty minutes on a few times a week. It's a tiny part of the gamut that is language arts, and a tiny part of our week. But it's one little way that I feel I am giving him what he needs and deserves as a student. It's not really differentiation or personalization when I'm only planning for one kid. It's easy for me to do in homeschool. I know it's not easy in a classroom. One teacher if she is doing her job well, (and if the school system has the right priorities and is pushing for this) is supposed to differentiate for a classroom of 20+ kids. Even if we are only considering the subject of spelling, this is hard work and can feel overwhelming. There's getting to know each kid and finding their level, splitting them into similar-ability groupings, creating the structures within a classroom so they can all get instruction and appropriate practice work at their own spelling level, then every week doing the lesson planning to give them new word lists and to keep all this going. A lot of things have to be in place to make it work, and even then it's not perfect. And yet it's really important. I am thankful that this year this kid is getting the words he needs.