The nesters are warming up to me. I was greeted by name (!) by many, and kids with questions or requests were able to tack my name on the end of their plea. I also felt more like a real teacher: Felicity had me stay in the classroom to help her with miscellaneous jobs instead of joining the kiddos at Library and recess (which I was secretly looking forward to). I typed up stories written in the “guess and go” method—next the kids will illustrate this final draft—luckily Felicity read them to me before I was sent to the computer. Another talent necessary for teaching/interacting with young children: being able to understand what they are saying/writing.

During writing and math periods I worked with Griffin again. We were writing bios for the program of the Greek play, so Griffin told me what he wanted to say, and I wrote it on a post-it for him to copy onto his paper. He has a wonderful ability to focus: sometimes it seems he just gets caught backwards and doesn’t quite know how to proceed. His bio went something like this:

“My name is Griffin. I like to snuggle with my mommy. I am Poseidon in the play. My brother was Zeus in the play. I am 7 years old.”

For math, Griffin surprised me by wanting to do a number practice game with two dice instead of one. In the one die version, you roll the die and copy the number rolled onto a sheet: whichever number makes it to the top of the page first wins the race. Griffin chose to play with two dice: you have to add the numbers on the dice before writing that number into the chart. Griffin did amazingly well, although was sometimes caught by the “backwards monster.” Most of his trouble came with his 4s, but after he realized “the L of the four points toward the calendar, not Felicity,” he did the rest correctly. It’s interesting that he oriented his numbers with objects in the room, almost as if the numbers had faces and a front and a back.

During quiet reading, I did a reading conference with Nina. Luckily she is a very composed, fluent reader, so I didn’t have to make too many comments. The notes taken during this conference: that Nina should slow down her reading pace. I also quoted observations she made about the book.