FIeld Trip

On Friday the first through fifth grades went to the stock show in Denver for a field trip. I chaperoned with my first grade class. About half of the boys in the class were dressed in their best jeans, shirts, cowboy hats, and boots for the stock show. It was really adorable. We took busses there, which was an adventure in itself. My class had to split up on two busses, which meant that I was put in charge of ten first graders. Luckily my class is pretty well behaved, so it wasn't too hard except for trying to herd them all in one direction and not get them mixed up with other classes.
Once we got in, there was an arena where they were doing horse obstacle things where the horse has to go over a series of jumps. I have no idea what that is called (clearly). After that we walked all around through different buildings and saw a lot of animals including horses, cows, llamas, el pacas, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, etc etc. We saw sheep being sheered which was pretty interesting. We also saw llamas getting bathed and blow dried. The kids in my class loved it. I loved it as well but I was also pretty allergic to the whole event, so I was sneezing my way through all the indoor parts. There was also a petting zoo part where the kids got to walk through a hay filled section full of the above mentioned animals (minus the horses and cows).

I put a link to the pictures I took below. The ones of the kids are pretty cute : )

Today we had off of school for Martin Luther King day and went to a march in Denver (the second largest MLK day parade in the country/world). It was awesome. I will post pictures of that soon. Tomorrow it's back to school!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028091&l=33235&id=10300564

Ding, Round 2

I haven't written in a long time...because nothing has really happened. Until now. We started our second project, which is at a Denver elementary school. The school is in the bottom four schools in the district for literacy. They failed the literacy component of their last CSAP--Colorado standardized test, and if they don't raise their scores by the next time they take them, in March, the school will most likely be shut down. Our job is to work in different classrooms with students one on one helping them with their reading and writing.
The school is 95% Latino and has kindergarten through second grade classes that are entirely taught in Spanish. Above that, most classes are taught in English with assistance in Spanish. In the morning I am in a kindergarten class and in the afternoon I am in a first grade class. Both of my classes are completely taught in Spanish and all of the students are first language Spanish speakers. The kids are ADORABLE. It's kind of fun because they are learning to read and write in Spanish and are at a level right around where I am, maybe a little lower, in learning those things. When there is reading or writing time in a class I walk around and help whoever needs help, working one on one with spelling and punctuation. At the end of the day in my first grade class there is an English lesson, where the kids usually have to practice writing in English. Yesterday the teacher told the class they were all going to write something and they just sat there. Then she said "in English" and they all groaned. It was pretty cute.
Today was a half day for the kids because there was teacher training, but we came in the first half of they day and unpacked computers for a computer lab they are setting up in the library. We set up 24 new computers. The teachers and librarian were really happy that we did it because they haven't had computers in the school yet that work. We also get to go to recess with the kids, which is fun. Today I helped kids make a snowman and played four square for a while. It was pretty fun.

I think it's going to be a good project. We are running after school programs starting January 26th, which should also be fun. I will write more when something eventful happens, which it is bound to : )