Last night was BTSN! I was pretty excited, mostly because other than the first day when I spent an hour in the classroom, I really have only a vague idea of what goes on there for six hours a day.
So, first things first... we were hoodwinked into a PTA meeting. It was NOT mentioned in any of the letters that were sent home about BTSN. Tom and I weren't the only ones confused/annoyed either. We were sitting next to another couple and we were talking amongst ourselves trying to figure out if we were even in the right place! Here we were, there to see our kids' classrooms and found ourselves sitting in a cafeteria holding a meeting agenda in our hands. At least they kept it brief. But, YUCK.
After that, there was a talk from the principal about the school and the most recent test scores as they compare to the rest of the county. (which were awesome...so yay!) Then they paraded out the faculty. And then, mercifully, after THAT we were released to go to the classrooms.
Tom and I collected the handouts and then situated ourselves in the tiny primary colored chairs. We noted that Ben had been given the job of calendar helper for the week, which I was surprised he hasn't mentioned. He's big into the classroom jobs thing. :)
The teacher gave us a play by play of how they spend the day. MAN, do they pack a lot into that day. It's actually pretty amazing. Tons and tons of time is spent on phonics and writing. We learned about "kid writing" (which encourages the kids to write the sounds they hear in a word and draw a "magic line" if they aren't sure of a sound or how to make a letter, so they don't guess and learn to spell/write things the wrong way) and "teacher writing", where she writes below it and thus, shows them how to do it the right way.
She showed us all their centers... the kids are broken into five groups of five and each group is assigned a center for the day with a "must do" activity and then another fun option for when they are finished with the "must do". Right now, the groups are random, but she said to expect the kids to come home and say they've been moved to a different group because she moves them around according to skills they've mastered/things they need work on.
Every single activity has multiple purposes... it was really fascinating/overwhelming.
For instance, each day, they change out a number board for what day of school it is, which teaches them number recognition, counting and place value. Then another piece is added on to the caterpillar on the wall that will eventually crawl all the way around the room... the multiples of 2 and 5 are colored differently so they can eventually count it by 2's and 5's...
They also have a daily counting jar, where she puts a number of objects into it in the morning and each child has to come up and write how many are in the jar... so they are doing both counting and number writing.
There is a morning message that she writes and they read it aloud together and then do an activity with it... yesterday's was circling all the capital letters.
They have a book of the week (This week's is Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten) that they do a different activity with every day. On the fourth day they have writing workshop where they write their OWN book based on that week's selection and on the fifth day, they have a celebration where they read their book. There is a vocabulary word that comes out of the weekly book ("prepare" for this week) and they add pennies to a box every time one of them uses it correctly that they eventually COUNT. And it goes on and on and on... so much thought goes into everything they do with them! It's amazing....
Anyway, so we left pretty impressed. I like his teacher and she seems to enjoy the kids and what she does, which has always one of the most important things to me. Ben still says he LOVES kindergarten, which is awesome.
So, other than the sneaky PTA meeting, it was a wonderful back to school night and we got a really great peek into what goes on every day. It makes me very excited to watch the year unfold!
