The Po Show

Kindergarten Morning

I spent an hour and a half in Tessa's class this morning. As part of National Education Week, parents were invited to come and observe a typical morning in class. This was nice, since our school is a closed campus, meaning the kids are dropped off outside the building, so I never get to see their classrooms. It's such a contrast to when Matthew was in K, and I used to walk him into the room everyday (and try to help him settle into an activity during "free centers" time). Every morning I see Tessa to her class' line, and watch her march into the building, and that's that.

This morning was devoted to Literacy Centers. Just the *name* completely and totally blows me away. I still have not adjusted to this whole concept of teaching kids to read in kindergarten. It was a lot more low-key when Matthew was kindy in CA, and even in MA reading instruction was not as intense as it is here. I watched Tessa and her peers in their group write out a poem about their families, label pictures they had drawn of the members of their families, use highlighters to mark the words they could read in the text. (The most hilarious moment of this segment was when they were choosing highlighter pens and another girl chose the one and only pink highlighter in the cup. You should have *seen* Tessa's eyes widen and I could just read her mind: "SHE TOOK THE PINK ONE!!!")

I saw the other groups work on spelling new vocabulary, on sorting words, on looking for written words around the classroom, on coming up with words starting with every letter in the alphabet. It was all striking, that these tiny children were learning to read, two months into kindergarten. It is *especially* striking considering that English is the second language of the majority of these children (some definitely are not at all proficient, so there is an ESOL teacher who regularly comes into the class).

Tessa is so in her element in kindergarten. Her hand shoots up immediately whenever a question is asked. She always wants to be the one to "share" next when the teacher asks the class for their thoughts on a story. She's so confident and so smart and several times the teacher's aide looked over at me and smiled broadly when Tessa made a comment.

It was so fun, and so heartening, to see my girl doing so well in big kid school. She's waited her whole life, literally, to go to the same school as her brother (from the time she used to toddle into his kindy class and make herself at home). And she's rocking the house :).