A little background: Good teaching requires a high level of engagement between teacher and student.  And one of the best ways to build such rapport is through questioning.  Active questioning helps ensure—nothing completely ensures!—that the students are paying attention and “taking in” the curriculum content.

So when the moment comes and the questions begin—no matter what the topic—the gasps begin.  Collectively, the gasps make quite a noise.  Short, quick intakes of breath, tinged with fervent desire, accompanied by small grunts and gurgles and vigorous shaking of raised hands—these all convey an eagerness to contribute.

The hands are always raised with supreme confidence.  If you were visiting the class for the first time you’d be assured that every one of those kids has “the” answer or “an” answer that the teacher is seeking.  But here’s where emotion overwhelms the child.

My decidedly unscientific estimate is that 1 out of every 3 kids that she calls on doesn’t have anything to say!  Nada!  She calls on them and they say nothing.  They heard the question, saw that as a signal to contribute, but they forgot to take the time and consider what their response was going to be when called on.

See also: A Handy Trick for Learning to Read

My teacher regularly reminds all the students that they need to put a thought “in their head” before they raise their hand, but the gasps continue– day after day, month after month.  Of course, not all students are unprepared when called upon.  Many have been paying keen attention and can move the classroom conversation along.  However, even these children emit “the gasp” when the question gets posed.

These are simply kids that have a common need: To be accepted into the classroom community.  And often, that emotion puts them in the awkward position of “gasping” at the opportunity to contribute–mindlessly flailing their hand to answer a question that they have given absolutely no thought to.

Every time I hear the “gasp” I am both amused and humbled.   To me, it is incredibly sweet and a wonderful proof point of how our characters take shape.  We all want to be accepted, and the “gasp” is a daily reminder of that fact.

You can learn more about how to get involved on the Experience Corps website.

Robert Hodder is blogging about his first year as a volunteer with AARP Experience Corps, helping kids in a Washington, D.C. elementary school with their reading skills. AARP Experience Corps will be expanding into its 20th city, Chicago, in the 2013-14 school year and is in the process of recruiting volunteers. You can also follow Robert and his experiences on Twitter. For information on how to volunteer, please contact Patrice Gerideau at pgerideau@aarp.org.

Also of Interest

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• Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being

See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more

Photo by Robert Hodder 

My Experience Corps kids are currently engaged in “author studies.”  What you and I — if you’re a Gen Xer, boomer or older — used to call storytime!  To date, we’ve read a number of great children’s authors and illustrators: Ed Young, Eric Carle, Rachel Isadora, Mo Willems, Dr. Seuss, Ezra Jack Keats, Shel Silverstein and Laura Numeroff.

My teacher even spends time teaching the kids about individual authors and illustrators, going so far as to create posters that describe their style and preferences.   For instance, Rachel Isadora generally writes about music and movement, renders most of her images in black and white, and often riffs on classic fairy tales.  To the left is the poster that’s up in the classroom. 

After reading a particular story, my teacher pulls out three or four sheets of blank paper and gets the kids to “retell” the story.  She calls on them, one by one, and they offer a detail that they remember from the story.  She asks them on which blank page the detail should go; she asks for class agreement and then she writes or draws it in on the appropriate page.

As the kids go through this exercise, they come to realize that they are literally telling the story by piecing together actions/details in the appropriate order.  It is precisely these actions and details that give the story its flesh, and they understand that it was the author and illustrator who chose the words and drawings to build the story they have just been retelling.

The kids really love their storytelling time.  I know I did.  But I don’t remember being quizzed on details of the story and where they fit in the narrative arc!

So when I watch the classroom dynamic play out and these “retellings” go on, I wonder how the kids lives will turn out, and what roles they will play in their communities.  But one thing I am sure of: their ability to read at grade level will help them immeasurably on their personal journeys.

You can learn more about how to get involved on the Experience Corps website.

Robert Hodder is blogging about his first year as a volunteer with AARP Experience Corps, helping kids in a Washington, D.C. elementary school with their reading skills. AARP Experience Corps will be expanding into its 20th city, Chicago, in the 2013-14 school year and is in the process of recruiting volunteers. You can also follow Robert and his experiences on Twitter. For information on how to volunteer, please contact Patrice Gerideau at pgerideau@aarp.org.

Also of Interest

• A ‘Handy’ Trick for Learning to Read
• Annette Funicello: From Mouseketeer to Teen Idol
• Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being

See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more

We all bring different experiences and backgrounds to our reading.  Our comprehension skills, vocabulary and language fluency all factor into what we take away from the series of letters and spaces on the page in front of us.  But the foundations of how we decode those characters comes from our learned ability to translate “letters into sounds” and “sounds into words.”

And so, most of us can “read” the subtitle of this blog as “According to research…”  Even more context would help us confirm that’s what the meaning of the letters is.  We had to make some assumptions to come to this conclusion, but we had experience to do that with.

Photo: From top right, to top left, the steps to learning to read. 

Elementary school kids don’t have that luxury.  They are learning to read.  So my teacher started with basics.  The boys and girls have learned to recognize letters, and the sounds that those letters denote.  R/rat/rrr.  T/top/tuh.  O/octopus/ahhh.  Every day they go over the entire alphabet to establish their mastery over all the vowels and consonants.

Once the connection between letters and sounds has been established, the kids can then take those sounds and string them together into words.  “Tapping out” words is one of the primary tactics that my teacher employs to strengthen their ability to pronounce and recognize words.

“Tapping out” R (R/rat/rrr), I (I/ih/itch), and T (T/top/tuh) with their thumb and fingers allows them to string together the sounds and then “blend” them together.  The “word” that they create it “rit.”

Of course, “rit” really isn’t a word, but my teacher has them build “nonsense” words as well as real words to help them improve their phonic awareness.  So, by building simple words—“rit” can easily be morphed into “rat”–and “tapping them out,” the kids strengthen their reading abilities and build their vocabulary.

The funny part is that they really enjoy sounding out the “nonsense” words—sometimes more than real words– but there’s a healthy blend of real and nonsense, because, aoccdrnig to rscheearch, it is ultimately their vocabulary and comprehension that will allow them to make the transition from “learning to read” to” reading to learn!”

 Robert Hodder is currently working with Experience Corps in Washington D.C. to help K-3rd graders with their reading skills.

100 days of Learning!

The class then read The 100^th Day of School as a shared reading.  That means the teacher reads aloud and the children follow along, pointing to the sequence of words as they are spoken.  I sat with my kids and pointed to the words while they took turns pointing with me.  The exercise builds their recognition of  “words” in sentence form, even if the word is not in their vocabulary.  So, while they may not be capable of recognizing the word “because,” they are learning that it is the 4^th word in the sentence and seeing it in a sentence frame.

After the shared reading, the teacher gathered all the boys and girls back together to work on a numbers exercise.  All year long they have been learning to count to 100, with a particular emphasis on counting by 10’s as a guide.

Here’s what happened: She placed 100 chocolate kisses throughout the classroom—in some easy and some not so easy places to find—and then the kids went on a hunt.  Each kiss had a number written on the bottom, so each child took their random “finds” back to their seats. Then they placed each kiss with its number on a corresponding sheet labeled 1-100.  As the teacher called out the numbers, each kid brought up their kiss until there were 100 kisses lined up neatly in rows on her master sheet.

The morning was full of fun and learning, and that’s the kind of engagement kids need on celebratory occasions like this.  It’s the oldest formula in the world.  Horace, Aristotle and others said it a long, long time ago: the best way to teach is to both “delight and instruct.”

You can learn more about Experience Corps and how to get involved here. 

Photo by Robert Hodder

Maintaining discipline in a classroom of elementary school kids is seldom easy.  My teacher has a number of tactics that she uses.  When a couple of kids aren’t paying attention or picking at each other, she says, “I’ll wait.”  She then silently pauses her lesson, the room gets quiet, and the kids that aren’t focused realize all eyes are on them and they settle down.

The Essential Agreement

If things get worse and more kids “don’t have their eyes on the speaker and their mouths shut,” she’ll ask for everyone to “give her five.”  That’s “code” for demanding their full attention.

Let’s remember, these are elementary school kids, and impulse control issues aren’t totally ingrained yet.  (Would that impulse control issues were ingrained throughout the entire American population!)  But my teacher only needs to use these tactics three or four times a day, which I think is pretty remarkable.

Much of this is due to the “essential agreement” that is reviewed as class begins. First thing every day, she reminds the kids that they are at school in order to achieve their “goals and dreams,” and that success will only come if they follow these basic rules:

• We follow directions the first time
• We are respectful
• We take turns
• We keep ourselves and others safe
• We care for the environment

The kids recite these rules every day, and they are a constant touchstone for their behavior.  When a child doesn’t “follow directions the first time,” the teacher — or me if I’m working with the child — can say, “Remember our essential agreement, you have promised that you would follow directions and I don’t see you doing that.”  Or, if they put their milk carton in the trash instead of the recycling bin, we can say that “you aren’t helping care for the environment.”

It’s kind of a contract, and it helps the kids put their behaviors in context.  It ties them to the world, both inside and outside of the classroom.  And isn’t that what “growing up and learning” is all about!

Robert Hodder is blogging about his first year as a volunteer with AARP Experience Corps, helping kids in a Washington, D.C., elementary school with their reading skills. AARP Experience Corps will be expanding into its 20th city, Chicago, in the 2013-14 school year and is in the process of recruiting volunteers. You can also follow Robert and his experiences on Twitter. For information on how to volunteer, please contact Patrice Gerideau at pgerideau@aarp.org.

At my AARP Experience Corps school, the students woke up Halloween morning and put on their costumes for the school day.  Teachers and administrators dressed up as well and the entire school stepped outside for a street parade.  They marched about five blocks — safely escorted by police motorcycles — and throughout the entire trek they continually yelled, Happy Halloween!

The teachers: left to right – Ms. Diljohn, Ms. Kenny and Ms. Boatwright.

For Ms. Diljohn’s class, it was their official introduction to the exclamation mark.  As early readers, the kids are building their punctuation awareness.  First came the period, then the question mark, and, for Halloween, the exclamation mark!  Prior to trooping out for the parade, Ms. Diljohn, “aka The Green Crayon” read them I Like Pumpkins!, which uses rhyming words to tell a Halloween story.  It was fascinating to see how quickly the kids understood the energy conveyed by that symbol.

The kids are continuing to progress with letter and word recognition, and their teacher routinely adds in more complex ideas — like alliteration.  This week, she introduced the concept as the opposite of rhyming, where words sound the same at the end.  With alliteration, words that start with the same sound are found in groups.  With this method she is getting them to think about a beginning, middle and end for all words.

Hope you had a festive Halloween.  Thanksgiving is next!

By the way, a couple of people have asked about how to sing the “Days of the Week” song using the Addams Family theme song. So here it is:

Days of the week (Snap, Snap)

Days of the week (Snap, Snap)

Days of the week, Days of the week, Days of the week (Snap, Snap)

There’s Sunday and there’s Monday,

There’s Tuesday and there’s Wednesday,

There’s Thursday and there’s Friday,

And then there’s Saturday.

Days of the week (Snap, Snap)

Robert Hodder is blogging about his first year as a volunteer with AARP Experience Corps, helping kids in a Washington, D.C. elementary school with their reading skills. AARP Experience Corps will be expanding into its 20th city, Chicago, in the 2013-14 school year and is in the process of recruiting volunteers. You can also follow Robert and his experiences on Twitter. For information on how to volunteer, please contact Patrice Gerideau at pgerideau@aarp.org.

Ms. Diljohn and her students.

H. L. Mencken once famously said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  My Experience Corps corollary is “Nobody ever went broke overestimating the energy in an American public elementary school.”  Those kids have got a joie de vivre (enjoyment of life) that doesn’t quit, yet their teacher expertly channels that enthusiasm into an eagerness to learn.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues.  For part of the morning they sit “Criss-Cross Applesauce” while working on their reading skills – phonics and vocabulary.  Several of them fidget during this time – I can remember this wonderfully descriptive word from my early days, which was, I believe, oftentimes used to describe me – but my teacher has a bevy of techniques to calm and refocus the kid’s attention.  She periodically sings rhymes and songs along with the children to gently reinforce positive behaviors and channel the exuberance I’ve described above.  And she keeps them moving with a purpose!

I’m there through June of next year, and will frequently blog about my experiences.  One of my proudest accomplishments to date is to sing the classroom song about “Days of the Week” that’s based on the musical theme from the Addams Family! Give it a try.

Robert Hodder is blogging about his first year as a volunteer with AARP Experience Corps, helping kids in a Washington, D.C. elementary school with their reading skills. AARP Experience Corps will be expanding into its 20th city, Chicago, in the 2013-14 school year and is in the process of recruiting volunteers. You can also follow Robert and his experiences on Twitter. For information on how to volunteer, please contact Patrice Gerideau at pgerideau@aarp.org.

Photo credit: Robert Hodder