Staff Blog

The preschoolers have been learning about the difference between living things and nonliving things. One example of a living thing, which we have been studying a lot about, is a plant. Every time I review with the children they say, "Sige ug balik" (It's a repeat). By the end of the unit the preschoolers were able to identify a plant, tree, shrub, vegetable, and grass. They also learned the parts of the plant (stem, flower, fruit, and roots) and where plants live (in desserts, farms, forests, and gardens).

One of my favorite parts of the unit was taking the preschoolers outside for a mini field trip. Our school is surrounded by many different kinds of plants. On our "living things walk" we saw many banana trees, mango trees, and even an avocado tree. The preschoolers loved searching for living things and telling us what they found.

What a joy it was teaching the preschoolers about plants. We had a fun time learning together!

We’re making some changes in preschool.  This is my third year as the preschool teacher aide but this school year is different.  One change is that we have a new main teacher, our principal.  Also, we are using the same lesson plans but taking a different approach when teaching lessons.  The schedule is also different:  the 5 and 6 year old students stay until 11:30 for additional lessons to prepare them for the next level and the 4 year old students go home at 10:15.  

This year I am teaching math for 45 minutes to five kids.  Our first topic was on sorting and classifying. The students enjoyed sorting through objects looking for common attributes like size or color.  One student kept asking, “Sorting ta, Teacher?”  (“Teacher, are we still sorting?”)  I said, “Yes, we are still sorting.”

We moved on to Topic 2 (patterns) and Topic 3 (Numbers 0-5) and he still wanted to know if we were working on sorting.   Every day he kept asking me the same question, “Sorting ta, Teacher?” and I replied the same, “No, we are now on a new lesson!”

Suddenly, one day that little guy asked me, “Patterns ta, Teacher?” (“Teacher, are we in patterns?”)  He had shifted his question! Unfortunately, I had to answer, “No, we are now on numbers”.  But the real thing that is amazing about these conversations is that he is asking the questions in the first place.   This little guy is the shiest of all the students and it has taken him quite a while to feel comfortable about being in school much less being able to ask questions.   I am so proud of how much he has grown.   

Individualized Instruction (II) at CCHS is an intervention that helps students improve their academic skills, especially in reading.  But teaching II with Group 1 has been a bit different since it is a group of lively little girls rather than a one-on-one session.  They practice their beginning reading skills by reviewing their story selections and high frequency words.  After that they choose a book from the classroom mini-library and I read it to them.  The girls take turns choosing the book for the day.  Recently one of the girls chose the book Why? by Miriam Frost.  This book is full of “why” questions, so it’s perfect for building reading comprehension skills.  

The conversation while reading the book with the girls went something like this:

Question:  Why is the snow cold and not warm?

Answer:  Because it’s ice.

Question:  Why do we fall down but not up?

Answer:  Because we slide.

Question:  Why do bats sleep upside down but not right side up?

Answer:  Because the bats don’t have hands to hold. That’s why he sleeps that way.

Question:  Why do we stand on our feet but not on our hands?

Answer:  Alangan! matumba manta if mag tindog sa atong kamot. (English translation:  We will fall down if we use our hands.)  This was said in a tone of voice implying, oh come on teacher, you know the answer!

The girls are very cute!  My prayer is that they will continue to love and value books as they grow up.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”      Dr. Seuss

Kind, generous people send all sorts of needed things to the shelter and school.  Earlier in the summer a couple of boxes arrived with an assortment of clothes, toiletries, shoes, toys, books and more.  BOOKS!  We’re always happy to get books at school.  We were curious as to who sent the books since we had not been expecting lots of books.  We were told that, once again, a wonderful friend who is a media specialist in a school had “secretly” given the books.

The kids noticed the books up high on a shelf right away when they came for library and asked if they could check them out.  Since the books needed to be entered into the library system and the usual person who does that work was on maternity leave, the kids have had to wait a bit to check out the new books.  Well, the books are ready now!  Thank you for giving these beautiful books. We are so blessed to have tons and tons of books.

“There is more treasure in BOOKS than in all the PIRATES’ LOOT on Treasure Island.”  Walt Disney

For the past few weeks, the preschool class has been learning about landforms.  They now know how to identify mountains, valleys, hills, volcanoes, isthmuses, and islands. 

They even sang a song during their morning meeting about landforms!

They topped off the unit by making their own models using play dough.  Fun stuff!