Thursday, March 6, 2008

I am from...

I am subbing in a really cool classroom this morning at College Park Elementary School in San Mateo. It's a combined group of 4th and 5th grade GATE students. GATE is a special program for "Gifted" students and these kids are awesome and completely making my day!!!

They're smart, attentive, interested and curious and imaginative and gentle and fair and a whole bunch of other wonderful things.

Their teacher left a poetry assignment for them to do during Language Arts this morning but it turns out they had already done it and came running up to show me their journals in order to prove it. Sure enough they had completed it already and so I had them silently read (which they love by the way--how great is that!) while I tried to whip up another lesson plan.

I was in a 6th grade classroom yesterday at another school and the teacher had posted some poems called "I am from..." poems that I loved reading. So I decided to give it a go with these guys today and they completely took it and flew with it. I found some examples online and read them aloud and then we brainstormed some topics they could include in their poems and then they went to work.

For the last 10 minutes we shared our poems, I shared mine first to make em feel a bit more comfortable. I was totally blown away with the confidence and imagination and descriptive thoughts and words that came out of these little guys. I have been in high school classes that couldn't compete with what I heard.

So I'm loving being here today and these kids are inspiring me!!! I had one kid ask today, If I am finished with all my work (which he honestly was) can I read ahead? Hah...how great is that!!!

What happens to kids when they leave elementary schooL????

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