What's a Two-Week Takeover?

Two-week takeover (n.) - ten schools day during which a student-teacher takes on full teaching responsibilities; a tiring, yet very fun experience.

ex: I've been in bed at 9:00 every night since my two-week takeover started. 

One week down, one more to go! My two-week takeover is off to a great start. Here's a little glimpse at  what I've been doing:

• KWL Chart - What we KNOW, what we WONDER and what we LEARNED all find a place to live on this simple graphic organizers. To start out my thematic unit on play, I worked with my students to fill out a KWL chart. We've been referring to it over the course of the week and adding to it as we see fit.

• Voices in the Park - I mentioned this book in a previous blog post. I read it aloud to my students and gave them three different writing prompts to choose from. The prompts all related to the role of play in the book. It went well, but I'm not sure the kids really enjoyed the book as much as I thought they would. 

• Estrellita se despide de su isla/Estrellita Says Goodbye to Her Island - Also mentioned this book before. I brushed off my Italian skills and tried to apply them to reading this bilingual Spanish and English book. My friend Mike helped me out a LOT! I did my best with the pronunciation, and it must have worked because the kids LOVED this book. They really delved deeply into discussing Estrellita's experiences in saying goodbye to her homeland. I also asked a series of questions in which I asked them to imagine that Estrellita was going to be a new student in our classroom. They empathized with her and talked about ways they could make her feel welcome. It was great.

• Venn Diagram activity/Google Street View - Playgrounds look different depending on where you are. Using Google Street view, we examined the play area at a public school in North Philly and compared it to our own playground using a Venn Diagram. The students were really curious about the school's play area and even asked if we could take a field trip there! 

• 4 Corners/Debate - Best. Lesson. Ever. I am so proud of this one. I started out by pointing out four signs that were hung around our room (Agree, Strongly Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree). I read three statements and the kids moved silently to the sign that matched their opinion. My statements were: 1) When I play, I feel like grownups are always telling me what I can and can't do; 2) I like to play in ways that grownups don't always understand; and 3) We don't need teachers with us at recess. The students' opinions were extremely interesting. After that, I showed them two videos of an adventure playground in Wales called "The Land." They were HOOKED! After we talked about what we observed in the videos, I explained that we were going to debate the safety issues of adventure playgrounds. It was entirely student led. I told them that I didn't want to call on students, so we were going to run the debate like a Quaker meeting: we sat in silence and if you felt like you had something to say, then you stood up and said it. A lot of the time five or six kids would stand up at a time, but I didn't say anything. They worked it out themselves. One kid would start to talk and the others would sit down. There may have been a few disgruntled sighs, but really they did a fantastic job. They were so engaged and had wonderful things to say. 

So that's what I've been up to! I feel like I'm living from one hour to the next. I have everything planned out, but I'm always trying to stay one step ahead of the game, making sure that I'm planning for things to go wrong and keeping one eye on the clock. It's been exhausting, but I'm loving it. 

- Rachel 

p.s. I made it through two rounds of interviews with the School District of Philadelphia! Fingers crossed.