Looping Part 1

Happy Hump day!

I know it's already Wednesday- but I feel like my week is just starting. Today I attended my first series of TAP classes to certify me as a mentor teacher. Woot woot!

As I mentioned in my post Hello Third Grade I am going to be looping with my students. Since I just briefly explained in that post I will dedicate the next couple of posts to looping. 

About half way through the year as I got to know more and more about my class and have the opportunities to just sit back and watch as they blew my minds away, it dawned on me how much I love this group of kids.  I realized that just one year would not be enough with this great group of kids. I weighed the options of staying in 2nd and moving up with them to 3rd. The benefits of moving to 3rd seemed to outweigh my one position of staying in 2nd which was I knew my material and I felt comfortable (okay, I lied... that was two pluses).

In conversation with my master teacher, I had expressed how I loved this group and would love to have another year to grow with them. Well... word got around to my principal and things just fell into place: my wish was granted.

I was THRILLED. But then reality sunk it... I started to remember when I was a kid... probably my favorite thing about a new school year was the day I found out my teachers name. I got to create this vision in my head about what my teacher was going to act like, look like, talk like, etc. Then... my favorite day... meet the teacher night. This was the night that I would find out if what I dreamed up in my head was correct. All of a sudden I went from being completely excited to feeling as I had taken one of best experiences away from my students. Don't stress too much- it didn't take long though until I got out of this new rut and started to feel excited again.

So of course I had to tackle the rest of the year with lots of plans...

Telling my students: I waited until after testing to tell my students. My main reason for this was because I didn't want them to think the year was over and we were already just focused on third grade. We still had plenty of things to do that was 2nd grade stuff, it just seemed too premature to talk about third grade. Plus... I needed time to find a fun way to tell them- I couldn't just say..."Hey kids, I am going to be your teacher next year".  So... how did I do it you ask? At the end of the day one day, I told them I had a special surprise for them, we were going to play a fun game where we solve a mystery. They were so excited! I'm not going to lie... I was completely nervous. I was afraid of how they would act.

I put a word search on the board, I told them it was a game to figure out how much school spirit they had. I had random lines like: What is one of our school colors, What is the name of our principal, etc. Then the final question was: "What is the name of your third grade teacher?". *Quick note: since my students are ELD students, they typically move together through the grade levels with the designated ELD teacher. The last question had them CONFUSED. They kept telling me: I am trying to find: ____'s name I know she will be my 3rd grade teacher. Finally... one student said wait... "Ms. Peterson why did I find your name in the word search but not Mrs. ___'s name?"

Well, let's just say... it still had not clicked... (Clearly my Teacher Knowledge of Students wasn't up to par for this lesson ;)).  I thought they would figure it out pretty quickly after that but I still had students who were SO lost about what this all meant. So I explained how I enjoyed being with them and I had asked our principal if I could move to 3rd grade. They were very excited, but I think still a bit shocked at this point.

I made sure that I told the students the same day that my principal had approved a letter going home to inform the parents. I did this to try to prevent parent phone calls with questions, but also so that the students could hear it from me first. See below for an example letter to send home to parents (please note: I would make sure to approve any material of this sort with administration before sending home) :

This was the very beginning to a ton of questions... Stay tuned to hear more about the questions they had and how I handled them.

Let's chat: Have you had experience looping? What advice would you give this newbie?