A Special {new} Student

I have been a very, very bad blogger. I have a draft or two sitting idle in Blogger, and even more than that sitting in my head. These just keep piling up, but remain unwritten. I'm sure many bloggers have been in such a pickle and know how hard it is to just get back into it again. So, I'm going to try to get some old and new things posted, and get some drafts completed and scheduled to post!

First, a brief look into my past month. In early March we had our spring break...two glorious weeks. I had a blast taking my hubby on a surprise mini-trip for our anniversary, babysitting my nephew for a few days, hiking, spending time with friends/family, and was treated to a spa day by my BFF. I think it was one of the most relaxing and fun breaks in...forever. And then we went back to school for a week. Things were going smoothly, and then I was informed on the first Friday back that I would be getting a new student the following Monday. He had just been adopted from Haiti and spoke no English and had little education. I spent the weekend in a panic. I hadn't had a non-English speaker in years and I wanted to make this kid feel welcome and do all I could to help him with some of the new changes in his life.

Monday morning came and I was introduced to a happy young man. We had a volunteer who spoke French come help him acclimate, and it was this person who discovered he knew almost no French, and that his native tongue was Kreyol. This also led to the discovery that he actually knew a little bit of English. My students, were all amazingly kind and helpful with our new friend. While Monday morning was still new we had a visit from our dean, she stopped in to do my formal unannounced evaluation - oh joy!

His arrival was two weeks ago and it has been an interesting two weeks. Arizona is an English only state, we can only teach in English (not that we have many people who can teach him in Kreyol!). I was worried about how I would be able to divide my time between him and my 27 other 5th graders, but I have had some great support from teachers/paras at our school and from the district. The best part has been getting to know our new friend - he is outgoing and has grown so much in just two weeks. All of the 5th graders have been so kind, caring, and helpful to him and it melts my heart. "Role-model" is a word you'd hear many times a day if you were a fly on our wall.

Although it has been stressful, and my counter is now overflowing with tons of new resources, I wouldn't have it any other way and I am so thankful that he was able to join our class.

I have been trying out some different websites/programs to help my new student and was recently asked to try out K5 Learning. K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students. I've been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program. If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their open invitation to write an online learning review of their program.

100 Acts of Kindness

Ahhh, summer vacation is here . . . and now I have time to work (what's wrong with me?!)! I have so many blog and TpT items on my to-do list for summer. Some are a bit ambitious, and I'm sure I won't accomplish everything on our short 6 week break (we're on a modified year-round schedule), plus I'm going to be out of the country for two weeks! But today I got together with my friend Dana from Learning Required to initiate her into TpT (go follow her brand new store)!

While she was working on her first freebie I went ahead and updated my very first freebie. It is perfect timing because I was planning on posting about it anyhow.

With the last few weeks of school approaching my class seemed to becoming a bit meaner to each other (surprising because I had a very sweet class!). It was time to put operation 100 Acts of Kindness into action. It is such a quick, easy, and low maintenance way to get students thinking about being kinder to each other and recognizing their peers for their kindness.

In the past I have done this as a whole month challenge, but I obviously didn't have a month, it was our last full week of school. I cleared a bulletin board and stapled up a folder to hold the tickets then copied a bunch on brightly colored papers, cut them apart and placed them in the folder. A quick explanation and model of how to fill out a ticket and my 5th graders were all ready to go!

The students were excellent about filling the tickets out at appropriate times of the school day and they would quietly leave the left side of the ticket on my desk and give the right side to the classmate who was caught in an act of kindness. A few times during the day I would staple up the kindness tickets and seeing them go up on the wall prompted students to be more alert and active in giving them out.

Here is what our bulletin board looked like a few days later.

I updated the TpT FREEBIE to look prettier (but the tickets are the same). This is one of those easy-peasy activities to remind students of the importance of kindness and recognizing and thanking others, even if it was just for lending a pencil or picking up a piece of trash.

If you have used, or plan to use, the kindness tickets with your students I'd love to hear your ideas!