ReadingMum

Sharing books is what I do :)

[readingmum]

Juggling the Emotional Intelligence in these moments.

The plan for today was to bring in some behaviour management during the reading session today. After last time, when I realised that my inattention to the distractible kiddies was doing a disservice to us all, I wanted to get a more attentive atmosphere in play. 

I cued with my words something like:

Eyes need to look here to see the pictures

Ears need to be listening to hear the story

You need to be sitting still so I can read at my best

I stopped reading when I saw kids not listening. I paused and waited for a little girl to turn around and again, when I saw two whispering to each other at the back.

...

There wasn’t much flow or fun within the reading today. It wasn’t just that I focused on behaviour.

I was conscious (overly conscious?) of how my reading activity interrupts the planned lesson with their teacher. There are moments when we transition in tandem and then other times I feel like reading for fun may be obstructing the learning sequence the educator has planned.

There was a handyman at work drilling and banging, making it harder to concentrate and listen.

It was hot and stuffy - or was I just feeling that more because the vibe wasn’t right?

Then, at the end, in saying goodbye to the class, Dragongirl got really upset that I was leaving, hence more interruption at the transition point.

At times like this, my sense of teaching and learning as a careful juggle of emotional intelligence comes to the fore. Reading for fun isn’t about obedience and silence; reading with little kids, including my own, needs attention to a range of little moments that all contribute to the success or not of the experience.

...

Moving forward, I think I need to communicate more effectively with Dragongirl’s educators on how reading for fun integrates within the planned learning activities.

I need to think more about how I interact with Dragongirl in the moments before I leave. She seems to need quiet words and little cuddles just for her to help her choose school over me.

But also - maybe I just need to give this more time? 

[readingmum]

What comes first? The book or behaviour management?

When I read to kids, I read to the kids that are listening. I feel the pull of the book and I use voice, performance and eye contact to draw the children closer to the story. But, what do I do when some children stop listening and start annoying the kids around them? 

In the secondary English classroom I’d call out the kids who are behaving inappropriately and I’d wait for attention. This strategy is most often applied at the start of the year when I meet a new class and we get to know each other. Sometimes I need to activate it again later in the term if the students’ behaviour has moved outside of acceptable bounds.

When I do the pause and wait routine, there is an invisible tension that scratches its way around my body. The waiting sometimes seems interminable, even though in reality it may only be seconds. What I find worse than my own physical discomfort is that the kids who have been connected to the story (or to what I’m saying) find their attention interrupted while I deal with those who are no longer focused on the task at hand. This is frustrating as a teacher (but I get that it’s part of the process. You lose time at the start to make up time later on.)

When reading to preschoolers as a parent visitor in the class I’ve been focused on positive rapport. I use the same key phrase every visit to get the kids to settle and sit. I say, “Can everyone see the book? If you can’t see the book the book can’t see you.” I noticed today how two boys quickly responded to that phrase and moved to sit down on the mat when I said it.

I’ve been focused on learning names so I can identify particular children and provide a personalised and caring reading experience that sustains a positive experience with books.

There were moments today though when the children that hadn’t felt the drawing of the story went from being distracted to distracting others. It wasn’t cool and it interrupted the story flow.

It was also disrespectful to the kids they were interrupting and to me.

So. Next story time. What’s the plan?

I think I may have to use the pause and wait strategy - even if it means the story flow is a bit jagged.  

I think I will have to show that I do care that the kids who are not listening are worth my time and attention just as much as the kids that are listening. I do have a habit of focusing on the attentive behaviour and ignoring the distracted. There are reasons for this but maybe for the next few sessions I focus on getting everyone listening. 

Otherwise, maybe I’m already undoing the purpose of my reading with preschoolers. It’s not just meant to be reinforcing the positive reading habits of the kids who demonstrate ‘good’ reading behaviour.  The goal was to draw the kids who didn’t have an affinity with books and help them to develop an awareness that books are for them too. 

It’s pretty lax of me to slip into the ‘bad’ teaching habits so soon but in writing and reflecting on these activities I’m hoping I’ll be self-correcting next time in situ.

Book of the day: Slinky Malinki

[readingmum]

You read to your kids? That’s cute.

Cue parental anxiety. It’s not enough to surround your child with books because you love books and you’re hoping that some of that booklove may carry through to the next generation. 

The big question of 2016 is, “but how are you teaching Math?” From this article, the question doesn’t seem to be coming from a shared sense of love and joy in the discovery of life’s mysteries through Math but from a sense of urgency about preparing kids for a highly precarious future. “How are you teaching Math?” may really be shorthand for “How are you trying to maximise your kid’s opportunities to compete against everyone else?”

The strong takeaway from that article - fascinating for so many reasons - is that Maths is a filter and that people use knowledge of Maths strategically to advance their child against their peers.

[readingmum]

Captain Obvious, Slap Me Now

You know that moment when you look out at the class you teach - probably around lesson three or four - when the guards come down and everyone relaxes into their true personality, and you see that confronting, at times frustrating, many times charming reality of who the kids are (when they are with you.) 

Now, I totally get that the reality I see is contingent on so many variables and that the personality that I interact with may be a very different personality when the kid interacts with other people. But in teaching it is very clear that each individual’s personality and temperament can be both familiar and strange, all at the same time. This kid reminds you of another one, maybe one you taught a number of years ago, maybe one from only five minutes ago. Yet at the same time, the kid is also very much distinctly their own person.

I’m used to this pattern of personality shadows in a high school 7-12 environment. 

But then I started spending time reading to the four to five year olds as my daughter’s early learning centre. And BAM! Mind. Blown. 

The personality dynamics of a secondary classroom were evident in the collection of twenty kids sitting at my feet. With that recognition came the realisation of the educative dimensions of my daughter’s teachers. Their competency in educating this disparate group of kids who are united by their attendance at this particular learning centre, (and who may never unite in their attention spans for more than 7 minutes at a time) was never so evident to me.

Note my hubris and disrespect that I was probably internalising up to that point. Cause I certainly have. Despite my own efforts to challenge a kind of dismissive patriarchal view in myself that the labour of the early childhood sector was ‘easy’ (ha!) ‘child-minding’, I was probably still all judgy and superior in regards to the work of early childhood educators in comparison to the work of school teachers. I was wrong.

I have 2 kids. They are the sun and moon of each other in personalities and temperament. That’s been eye opening as it is and I only have 4 months experience with 2 of them together. To add in a full spectrum of personalities and temperament, revealing as many shades as the spectrum of the sky above as we journey from day to night and back again is to see a class complement. To see dragongirl’s teachers nurture and care for the children, intertwining lessons of literacy, numeracy, physicality, curiosity and kindness with such deftness has taught me how narrow my view of early learning has been.

May I never slip and use the word ‘daycare’ again because the work of early childhood educators is so much more than that.

I have been so forgetful to what was obvious - that we are human and that even our littlest forms need love and care prefaced on a recognition and respect of their distinctive individuality. It takes an educator, a teacher, to do this work. 

[readingmum]

Making Room for Reading

“Is there room...on the broom...for a child like me?”

How much do I love reading Room on the Broom with dragongirl! But to share a well-loved book not just with dragongirl but with her classmates...there was definite trepidation in my book-loving heart today. And in contrast to Pesky Pirates, Room on the Broom is a longread for a preschooler. As I sat before the kids this morning I was thinking can I hold them for the story? Will they ride alongside me or will I lose them? 

My knees were shaking at the start of the read, and, still knocking out a nervous tap at the midway point, I was feeling the sheer nerves and uncertainty within this whole exercise. As a secondary teacher, I’d wait for a full class’s attention before starting an activity. With preschoolers, I’d have almost all of them and then one kid would poke the one next to them. I quavered. Do I pause and wait...? Or do I start? This time, I paused once or twice as we started but then I thought just read - and see if the distractible kidlets come on board.

It was while we were meeting the first animal - the dog, that a wail erupted from the back row. One boy had hit another with a sparkly silver plastic wand. I paused again uncertain. Cogs ticked ever so slowly in my brain.

Hitting another child. Behaviour Management issue. How hurt is the kid? Do I stop reading? Most of the kids were waiting on me to continue the story. But the boy at the back was building up some hearty sobs...? Then his educator stepped in. Swooped up the sparkly weapon of choice from one and lifted the crying boy up and out of the group. And on the story went on.

I eventually remembered to add some hand gestures for “The witch tapped her broomstick and whoosh! They were gone” and one child joined in from then on with me. The boy who’d come off second best to the real wand in the mix rejoined the group, eagerly picking up the gist of the story and listening intently.

The dragon turned up. I added my best Robbie Coltrane voice to the performance (sounding absolutely nothing like Coltrane but that’s by-the-by.) And then, the story was over.

By the end, a different two boys in the back (always the back row!) were gently wrestling, and I wasn’t sure if two of the girls on either side of me had glazed off or if that was their listening faces. But we did it! One longread. A class of preschoolers. One very nervous readingmum.

My Q&A at the end was sloppy so if my nerves continue to get the best of me I may need to plan out more questions to the kids in advance. 

Although, there was one beautiful answer from a boy who had followed the story from start to end.

I asked, “Who were the witch’s friends?” thinking we could tick off cat, dog, bird, frog. We got the first animal (frog) and then this boy answered very quietly, so quietly, I asked him to repeat what he had said. 

“I’ll be the witch’s friend,” he said.

And that was my awwwww moment for the day. 

I left my boardbook copy of Room on the Broom on the bookshelves for the day alongside Pesky Pirates with a reminder to handle books gently, return them to the shelves and to wash your hands if you have sticky fingers before touching them. 

As I left, two children claimed Pesky Pirates and Room on the Broom from the shelves and were sitting there, turning the pages and looking at the pictures. The others around them slipped back into preschool play mode, free from instructions, free to follow their own desires and curiosity, for the moments between my leaving and their next activity beginning.

Those two kids. Reading books for fun. Because they wanted to. It’s a start. :)

[readingmum]

Sharing the Love

There is not much scarier than a room full of preschoolers. Sure, the general vibe as a parent doing the drop-off/pickup is more, ‘oh, look at the adorable handprint pictures’, ‘ahhh, lookit those cuties playing tag’. 

And sure, there have been moments where I’ve mad-dashed my child to the communal toilet to look on as her educator attempts to clean poo out of the shoes of a child that didn’t make it. Respect for that educator. (As a high school teacher I’ve never had to deal with poo that didn’t come from my own child.)

But. Put me at the front of the preschool class and give me the responsibility of holding their attention while maintaining respectful classroom interactions. Scary. Damn scary.

I did it today though. 

For 7 minutes (was that all?) I read Pesky Pirates to an absolutely enthralled group of kids. 

There was a wobbly start. I asked too many questions about pet ownership trying to make an analogy about books being pets i.e. we need to care for them and be so gentle in holding them. NEVER ask preschoolers if they have a pet unless you want 20 synchronous stories of cats, dogs, fish and birds. (Rookie mistake, I know!) 

And there was a moment when I knew the educators were hovering like shadows over my shoulder, ready to save me if and when I lost control of the kids’ attention.

But then the words started to flow...

“5 pesky pirates sailed the seven seas...”

We counted the pirates down as a group as the pages turned. We commented on the other things we could see in the illustrations. 

“Hey, there’s a mermaid.”

“No. It’s a whale.”

“No. It’s a shark!”

All too soon I hit “BANG! Close the Book. No more pirates anymore.” 

The silence hung there just long enough for me to look over the kids’ expressions frozen in enjoyment and anticipation of where I was leading them and I thought, ‘Oh, no. What now?’

But then I remembered to Q&A what we read and the call and response between teacher and student/ adult and child must on some level be instinct. Instinctual too is the ebullience of children trying to share and the patient reminder of the teacher to hands up if you want to speak.

I carefully placed the book on the class bookshelf. I said the kids could borrow my book for today. That they needed to take care of it. Be gentle. Return it to bookshelf if they found it elsewhere during the day.

Breathed trust and willed hope that the 3D pirates are still attached this afternoon when I pick up Dragongirl.

Fingers crossed.