Back to basics

Today I realized the importance of going back to the basics.  The school where I teach is a "Back to Basics" school which means we teach with whole class instruction, use a reading program that is strong on phonics, our math program emphasizes memorizing math facts, and science, history, and geography are an important part of our day.    Many people do not agree with our philosophy, but many kids thrive in it.  The theory is to set the bar high for students to achieve more.

Our Kindergarten curriculum is pretty amazing.  By the end of the year our students have learned about the  seven continents, including a famous landmark and animal from each one.  They've been exposed to over 100 high frequency words with the expectation that they can read at least 50 automatically.  They've had a strong exposure to phonics and phonemic awareness.  Our writing program creates Kindergarten writers who easily compose 2-3 sentences on a topic, with a good number of students writing more.  We work hard and the pace is fast in my classroom - there's a lot to cover in only two and a half hours! 

Today, however, we stopped for a few minutes and had fun.  I played a song that is a medley of the Chicken Dance, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Head Shoulders, Knees and Toes.  We sang, we dance, we laughed, and were just plain silly.   As we sang, however, I began to notice how many students found it difficult to do the spider motion with their fingers!  More importantly, quite a few students did not know the words to Itsy Bitsy Spider or Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes!

Earlier this week we sang London Bridge is Falling Down.  My aide and I made the bridge and told the class to make a line to go under the bridge.  My class is pretty good at walking in a line to go to recess, but this was a different type of walking in line.  They had a very hard time with it and it took way more supervision than I thought it would.  Then when my aide and I captured a child for the part "Take a key and lock her up..." the class was hysterical!   I think most of them had never played London Bridges before!

So I'm going back to the basics and teach my students to play the old fashioned way!