Literacy Night!

One of the traditions of Reading Corps, which is the AmeriCorps Program that I was originally going to be a part of but then got cut because of funding, are Literacy Nights! A Literacy Night is a night (surprising, right?) after school when students and parents can come to get free books, and teachers can help promote literacy at home! Tracy and I decided to plan a Literacy Night, and we just had our first one on Thursday night. Our supervisor, who is the ELL teacher at Pateros, has a lot of brand new books that she has gotten over the years through a program called First Book. If you want to check it out, here is the link: http://www.firstbook.org (Karlie said our readers are lazy and don't want to google things themselves. Speak for yourself, am I right?) Anyway, we had A LOT of awesome free books to give away. We may have been more excited than the kids when we saw them. There were tons of disney books that we knew the kids would go crazy over. And many more!

Our theme was "Fall for Books." Every great Literacy Night needs a theme. I read that somewhere once. Here is a bulletin board I made for the event, and for the library in general:

The event took a lot of planning, and in the days leading up to the event, I was terrified that no one would show up. We had worked hard to get volunteers for the event and set up different stations and I was scared all this hard work would be for nothing, and we would just have an empty library. Luckily, we also put effort into advertising the event, so attendance was not a problem.

When I got back to the school a little after 5 to finish setting up for the event, there was already a family there. They thought it had started at 5pm instead of 6pm. Although this was stressful at the time, it turned out to be a good sign for the rest of the evening. More families started arriving at about quarter to 6, and from then until shortly after 6, people kept arriving quite steadily! And then they kept arriving... until the last family showed up after 7, when the event was supposed to be over. Although most people were trickling out by then, we let the boy choose some books to take home, and told him we would be having another event in the spring. Altogether, we had about 27 students at the event, and then their families. Most of the kids brought parents, although some that live in town showed up on their own, which was fine. It was great to see many siblings coming together as well. I learned about a few different siblings that I didn't know were related until that night. 

We had many different stations at the event, and about 10 different volunteers to be at each of the stations. We had two other AmeriCorps members come to help out, several teachers who are involved in the Afters program with Tracy and me, and even a couple of high school students. We really needed each of these volunteers so I was grateful for them. As the families walked in, I greeted them and had them sign in. Then each child got a leaf with a number on it for prizes later. Each adult also got a ticket for a door prize. Each student also got a bag that they put their name on to put their free books in! I also had the snacks at my table to make it a little more exciting. The next table was where parents could get more information about reading with their kids at home, and there were bookmarks for them to take home with tips, both in Spanish and English. I am not sure of the statistic exactly, but there are many families in Pateros that speak Spanish at home. So many of my students can speak both Spanish and English, and I am impressed by that every day. 

There were a couple different arts and crafts tables set up. One had many different foam board activities that we found from years past. Another station was set up where kids could make their own placemats. The next table had a fall-themed word search that the kids could complete, as well as a fall activity book that the kids could decorate with a leaf print on the front. Two teachers were running a stations on spiders where students could learn about spiders and then make their own spider out of pipe cleaners and a mini pompom. When students completed one of these activities they could then go to the free book's tables to pick out a book! We had three tables filled with new books, and then another table filled up with used books that were also available to the kids. The most popular activity was the book walk, which was a game where kids could win even more books! They walk around in a circle with numbers labeled on the floor while music was playing. When the music stopped, the kids would freeze, and then a number was called. Whoever was standing on that number would go pick out a book.

Throughout the night, I called out numbers for kids to win different prizes. Luckily we had enough small prizes that by the end of the night, every child had something to bring home in addition to all their  new books. And then two parents won door prizes that we had specifically for them. I made sure every student got a leaf as they walked in, but somehow I missed a few parents for the door prize. One parent asked about it after I had done the drawing, but luckily they did not seem too angry. Something to think about for next time though. It is really all about the kids though, so as long as they went home with books, I was happy. 

It was so great to see so many kids I know come to event. And they all seemed to have a great time with their friends, parents, teachers, brothers, and sisters. This kind of event is a wonderful way to bring together a school community, and I hope even more students (and teachers too) come next time. Tracy and I are already thinking about ways we can improve the next Literacy Night, and brainstorming many different possible themes. (maybe a jungle theme!! Wild About Books?? Give me some ideas in the comments section below)

Oh, and to keep with the tradition of leaving something unrelated at the end of my posts, here is the YouTube video that I promised from last time. Enjoy! P.S. You should click on the link and actually go to YouTube for this one, so you can see the full description. And understand fully.

A Typical Day

Hey blog-folks. Emily here. I realized I haven't really written about what my typical day is like at Pateros School so I shall do that in this post. Of course this "typical" day will constantly change. For example, on Wednesday I have somehow been talked into subbing for the high school English teacher in the morning. That will be different and scary, but I'm excited! It can't go that badly right? High schoolers should be easier than small children logically.

Anyway, here we go....

I get to school at 7:30 most days, which sounds early, but I live so close to the school that it isn't too bad.

From 7:30 to 8:00, Tracy and I are in our office and available for homework help for kids that are there early and might have not finished it the night before. We don't get kids everyday, but I think it's a good option for the kids just in case they need to finish something up quickly.

8:00-9:00

Tracy and I are both in our office at this time so we work on anything we have to do for AmeriCorps, plan events, work on lessons for classes we are helping teach, or any other things we find need to be done. Lately, I have been working on planning a Family Literacy Night, which will be next week! We have gotten the word out to the school and are working on informing the community about it as well. Also during this time I have been training my brain with a program I learned about called "Lumosity." Check it out on the interwebs. I figure that's a good use of my time. The children need my brain to be smart so theirs can be too.

From 9-10 I go to the fifth grade classroom and help them with reading. I will either read along with the story they are reading if they are reading as a group, or circulate around the room to help individual students if they are working independently. We have been reading a lot of interesting short stories, and this week they are reading biographies. I learned all about Roberto Clemente today.

From 10-10:15 I usually have a little snack because teachers get hungry too.

Then most days from 10:15 to 11:00 I go help out with the 6th grade band. I try to bring my flute most days and help these beginning students while they try to make some sort of sound come out of their instruments. I focus mostly on the flutes, and will occasionally help the saxophone as well. Past that though, I am pretty useless. It is fun though! And I can really hear some of the students making improvements. Mondays are just woodwinds so it's a great time to work closely with some of the students.

Also during this time, I will occasionally tutor some 1st grade ELL students. I did this one day so far to fill in for Tracy, and loved it so much. I want more. All of the opportunities seem to happen at the same time though. I might be doing more of this as the year goes on since band is just Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

From 11:00 until about 1:00 I don't have anything specific scheduled as of now. Except feeding myself. This might change as the year goes on and teachers find more needs in their classrooms. But for now this is more time to plan events and lessons, eat lunch, and occasionally take a walk to the post office. Tracy and I usually keep pretty busy and there are teachers that will ask us to help out in different ways so we are never very bored. Our office is right next to the library so we also help out in there a lot of time when it is busy. I have mastered the art of checking out a book.

From 1:15 to about 2:10, Tracy and I both help teach an elementary school health class. This is the first year this class had been taught and the teacher gets a new set of students each day of the week, so she can really use our extra help. When we are not needed directly in the classroom, we will help her plan lessons that fit into the curriculum. They are trying to implement the "Why Try?" curriculum (google it if interested) as well as certain health topics, which is a lot to cover with students you only see once a week. Creativity is a must.

At 2:10 I head back to the library to help in there for the rest of the day. A lot of the time, our librarian (Pam) will have a class in there at the end of the day, so I will help other students while she is reading to the class, or help the little ones pick or check out books.

Then from 3:00-4:30 is Afters! I think this is one of my favorite parts of the day. Pam and I work with the 3rd and 4th graders and have a group of about 10 kids, depending on the day. The Afters program is sponsored by a 21st Century grant, and kids come to Afters that need extra help so they do not fall behind in the classroom. The teachers recommended students in their classroom that would benefit from this extra attention. First we have snack at Afters, then homework time, then Imagine Learning (a computer reading program) for twenty minutes, then usually some more homework. Kids that finish their homework early have other options of what they can do until 4:30. And on Fridays it is usually a fun day since kids don't have homework. Last week we took a little nature walk outside, and this week we are making Thursday fun by dissecting Owl Pellets. Sadly, sometimes Tracy and I miss these fun Fridays because of our AmeriCorps meetings, but those are fun too.

And that's really all! I am enjoying it so far, and I think I'm getting into more of a rhythm as time goes on. I am getting better at always having something to do or plan if I am not with a class.

And on a completely different note...

I'll leave you all with this from my crazy hike this weekend. Stay tuned for a youtube video in which I accidentally record a video of mountains on my iPhone... completely upside down. The video wasn't accidental. Just the upside down part. It's really quite the masterpiece. Until then---

The Deathly Hollows, Pitch Perfect, and The Hunger Games. Oh, and Kindergartners.

This is a broken trumpet painted by two fifth grade gals. Now they want to play trumpet, isn't that interesting? Maybe that's a new recruitment technique. Break all your instruments, let kids paint them, then buy all new instruments so they can join band.

This post is going to be a smathering of topics, I've lost the ability to organize in my head.

DISCOVERIES

#1 If I hold these cards up to Kindergarten, First, and Second Graders they will immediately learn to audiate (hear music in their head) better than if I tried to use words to explain it. Monster #1 Means: SING INSIDE YOUR HEAD. Monster #2 Means: SING OUT LOUD. 

So we sang a song we all knew, "Boom De Adda" You know, 

I love the flowers, I love the daffodils

I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills

I love the fireside, when the lights are low,

boom de adda, boom de adda, boom de ah...

BUT! It became a game. I'd start holding Monster-Mouth-Open and we'd sing the song, and then I'd switch quickly to Monster-Mouth-Closed. When I stressed that the song had to keep going inside your head my students learned to audiate. And what a fabulous job they did. Discovery #1.

#2 A variety of things have been going on in my choirs, (1st/2nd grade, 3rd/4th grade, 5th-8th optional.) Firstly I've had a lot of fun changing the orientation and configuration of the chairs. Sometimes students will come in and the chairs will be facing a wall they've never faced before. Or they'll be in a circle. Or they'll be in rows. Or they'll be in a few rows, and a semi-circle, or columns. I don't know, I just like to freak them out a little bit. They talk less that way. And let's be honest, I'm not using the piano so why orient them towards it?

     Secondly after that amazing first day of middle school chorus when 25 kids showed up my numbers have been fluctuating, sometimes I'll have 14, sometimes I'll have 20. Last Thursday I had 25 again. I decided it all depends on how funny I am in their general music classes that are all scheduled before chorus on the same day. Interesting. 

     And lastly I have introduced the... JIBBERISH BALL. A squishy pool ball that fills up with water and splats against someone's face. Except in music class its function is to steal away the holder's ability to speak in real words. So I will be speaking to my class and telling them how wonderful they are when suddenly I pick up the ball and dwee ap ta te beedo beedo beedo wop wop wop etc. At first, each group was shocked. Ms. Kauffeld has actually gone insane. And then they realized that they were going to get to have a turn and we had a collective-near-meltdown from excitement.

     It goes like this, when you have the ball, you speak at your neighbor, pass it to them, they respond to you, then turn to the next person. And, very importantly, ONLY the person with the ball may be making noise. (Some classes struggled with this. Once you've crossed into the world of Jibberish it's nearly impossible to sit quietly.) What I found most exciting about this activity is that some of my students who had said only four words total since I've met them would suddenly have A LOT to say in jibberish. This will move us towards talking about Improvising and Music as a way to Communicate. 

Sometimes I scare myself.

#3 I've started thinking about the play that I need to create for/with the Kindergarten-4th graders at Folsom and the pre-K-6th graders at Isle LaMotte. At Folsom there is a paper hanging in my room with a pencil on a string that's labeled, "IDEAS FOR OUR PLAY." This idea backfired. "The Hunger Games" is written 5 times, each one if followed by about 34 check marks as if to say, "I agree." Other suggestions were, "Pitch Perfect," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (as the audience would clearly just fill in the rest of the story,) "Minecraft," ("It's a game. And it's violent, but there's like, no blood," the student justified to me after writing it.) That being said... I think I'm going to have to act as Teacher-As-Authoritarian and choose the story that we'll adapt without giving much consideration to their suggestions. But, 5 year olds just shouldn't be retelling the story of college a capella groups or cubes that attack each other. (My understanding of Minecraft is flawed, I know this.)

I've started to spend a little time here and there introducing some acting exercises in various classes, because they do help students to become more Artful, one of my three main goals.

     In one particular game I begin with a magic blob of goop that I sculpt into an object, use the object, and pass it to my neighbor who smooshes it up and re-sculpts it. The activity went swimmingly in the middle school. And then I played it with the first and second graders and we couldn't guess a single one of the objects made within the class. My favorite object sculpted by them? "It's a little skeleton hanging from a string!" Well, sure it is.  Second favorite? "It's my name! I can't believe you didn't get that!" 

#4 Here's some other stuff:

     -I went to a farm on an all-school field trip. My most productive endeavor was chasing an 

      escaping-preschooler through a pumpkin patch.

     -I'm bad at yoga.

     -I attended my first inservice that's during the school year which I deem makes it more real. 

      I probably shouldn't write about how it went in a public space.

     -We listened to The Token's version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and then a South African version in 3rd and 4th grade. They extracted evidence and made an argument about which one they believed to be from South Africa. (This was all to satisfy the requirements of my assignment for Inservice for our Common Core work.) It ended up being quite successful and fun. Methinks. 

That's all I can muster...

Now the students are taking the NECAPs. And that's the worst, no denying it.

So, cheers to all of us NOT taking the NECAPs!

-Karlie

Making It Work.

The theme of this post shall be, “Making it Work.”

(See Future Post Entitled, "Winging It.")

I’ll begin with a clear and tangible example.

I’m taking a lot of John Feierabend’s music pedagogy methodologies and materials to design my curriculum this year. Quick disclaimer: I haven’t been able to actually be trained in this, I’ve only been able to attend a handful of workshops, talk to people, and read stuff with my eyeballs.

“Fingerplays” are beatful rhymes/chants that you say while acting out the story with your hands. Sometimes you can use puppets. While using these in the classroom my students have been able to practice listening, remembering, echoing, keeping a steady beat, playing with tone of voice, being artful with our hands, engaging our imaginations and other great things that I probably don’t even realize.

Here’s a fingerplay that we used this week:

For the first character you use a very high voice, and the second character a very low voice.

1: Where are you going Big Pig, Big Pig?

2: Out in the garden to dig, dig, dig!

1: Out in the garden to dig, dig, dig! Shame on you Big Pig, Big Pig!

2: I’m sorry Ma’am but I’m only a pig, and all I can do is dig, dig, dig!

(Look, here’s a video of someone doing it on youtube. I don’t know why.)

So I went into my little box of stuffed animals/puppets…(I’ve been slowly adding to this collection but in order for a stuffed animal/puppet to make it in it has to be really cute, able to move in an artful way, clean looking, and cheap… so my collection is still small. However, I think I’ve finally figured out what to do with my giant and guilt-filled Beanie Baby Collection…)

So I’m looking and looking, bear, lion, hummingbird, bear again, crab…

No pigs.

But… I did have a Rhino and a Butterfly.

Alex promptly said to me, “But… why would a Rhino and a Butterfly be together?”

And I said, “Animals don’t really talk. So I think we can continue to suspend our disbelief and pretend that the talking animals-Rhino and Butterfly- exist in a world where they interact.”

So the chant became this:

1: Where did you go Rhino, Rhino?

2: Out in the garden to stomp real slow.

1: Out in the garden to stomp real slow? Shame on you Rhino, Rhino!

2: Sorry Ma’am but I’m only a rhino, and all I can do is stomp real slow.

And what I learned after the first time I did this with preschoolers was that this chant opened up a whole variety of new things to talk about. First I could perform the chant for them and ask them what happened in the story-testing their listening and comprehension. And to take it even further, there is an emotional element involved that I never even considered! The Rhino is stomping on the flowers which the Butterfly needs to survive! So suddenly all the kiddos were like, “Jigga Whaaa! BAD RHINO NO NO NO!!”

AND THEN, I had one class come in who pointed at the butterfly on my finger and screamed in unison, “THAT’S A MONARCH BUTTERFLY!!!!!” and then spent the next 5 minutes shouting facts about, and experiences they’d had with, monarch butterflies-simultaneously while I sat on my carpet square cracking up and shouting back at their little faces, “THAT IS SO COOL!”

So… The moral of this blog post is:

I’m not going to be perfect at each lesson, I’m likely not going to have exactly the right materials, or maybe it’s a little too easy, or a little too hard for my students… but I will make it work in that moment to make sure that we can take away at least a tiny valuable moment. AND- it’s possible that by “making it work,” for my situation, the result will be even better than if things had been laid out perfectly to begin with.

Ohhh Yeahh.

I’ma go out in the garden to stomp real slow now.

xoxox

Karlie

PS: This was the first week that every single Kindergartener got up and danced alone during our greeting. And for some reason, every single girl thinks that dancing is actually going into the middle of the circle and doing a backbend. Fair enough.

Hawk and Salmon Festivals

One of the things I love about AmeriCorps so far is that any volunteering we do on the weekends, or outside of our main service sites can count towards our total hours we need by the end of our service term.  The past two weekends I have volunteered at two different festivals.

First I volunteered at the town museum while a Hawk Festival was going on in Pateros. For this festival, different groups such as the Audobon society and other fish and wildlife specialists brought hawks and other raptors to town for people to come see in the park. A surprising amount of people are really into birds, so it seemed like they got a lot of people! Tracy, the other AmeriCorps member in Pateros, and I kept the museum open so people could come visit while the festival was going on. But we also took some time to look at the birds!

Whatchu lookin' at?

This past weekend, I continued the trend of nontraditional fall festivals and went to a Salmon Festival at Leavenworth Fish Hatchery. This was a free event for families to come and learn all sorts of things about fish! And eat food, And play games. And kayak. And rock climb. Everything a kid would want to do was there. But also fish related. It was great.

I was at the Gyotaku station for the day, which is Japanese fish printing. Fishermen originally made these prints to record their fish of the day, but now it is more of an art form. And the prints are now made with rubber fish. It was a fun activity, and so many kids wanted to do it that it made the day go by quickly. 

1. Paint fish

2. Put paper over fish

3. Rub fish

4. Ta-Da!

My beautiful creation

There are so many different volunteer opportunities in this area, and I am going to take advantage of as many as possible this year. I always felt like I was too busy during college to take advantage of things like this in Vermont, which was really a terrible excuse, but I am glad I finally am! Might as well take advantage of the short time that I will have here.

And I'll leave you with one final picture. A little piece of cuteness. An Amerikitten.

11 Days: Benchmarks and Tallies

With 12 days of teaching experience under my belt, my official teaching license signed by my middle school principal and former a capella mate, and a dented immune system… this life is starting to seem more real. This shall be a post of Benchmarks and Tallies.

Benchmarks and Tallies

• 15 Days: Is how far into the school year I made it before I got sick. As I sat on my darling little carpet square, next to my darling little Kindergartner, she proceeded to sneeze 25 times throughout the class. The look on her face said, "Dear Teacher, I have no idea what is happening to me right now and I'm sorry that you will undoubtedly be sick at the end of these 45 minutes, but I will now put my hands in my mouth, then onto that drum. Good thing I'm so cute."

• First Entirely Silent Class: Now, before you say, "Oopsa Karlie, you're teaching music so if the students are silent you're probably doing it wrong. Good try but let's go ahead and rescind that license," let me explain what this really means. As my 23 third and fourth grade students entered my classroom I stood in the doorway holding an index card that said, "Hi! Please enter silently." If I heard them speak, I beckoned them back to the door, and they entered again until they got it. I think a key element of this whole class was making sure to keep my attitude playful to make sure that students understood that silence wasn't a punishment, it was just a particular kind of class we were going to have. If a student spoke, I reacted as, "Oh no! You forgot!" I only had to have this reaction four times during class, and never to the same student. 

          As we moved through warm ups I gestured to all of them and pointed to my ears, then I

          sang the exercise, and gestured for them to repeat. It was the first class where I had full 

          singing participation, and we were all generally singing in the same key. To be honest, I 

          did bring in sound when I made a noise for "No" and a noise for "Yes." When I wanted  

          students to make an improvement I would demonstrate what I didn't want, and make a  

          weird "No" sound, then demonstrate what I did want and make some strange yippee-

          hands-in-the-air-dance thing. I was absolutely floored by how well students responded to

          this.

• 25 Middle Schoolers: Showed up to our first optional chorus rehearsal. Now, I told them to come and try it out with no obligation to return next week so it's possible that I'll lose some before the next rehearsal. But what I actually feel was the success here was that 25 students were curious about what chorus would be like.

• 4 Classes: Of middle school students back to back where we worked in groups to create our own lyrics to "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground." This gets tallied because in all four classes every student participated (some very minimally, but still,) every group had a verse by the end of class, and there was an air of excitement about the project and the continuation of it next week. Here is my favorite verse created by a group of 7th graders:

I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea

I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea

If I'm a flying stump in the sea, I'd land right on a whale,

and I wish I was a flyin' stump in the sea.

So, it doesn't make sense and it doesn't rhyme. But- it's packed full of imagery AND it's not inappropriate, so it gets tallied as a success for the middle school.

• 3 Classes: Have made it onto the map for our "Can We Make It Around the Entire World Through Music?" challenge. Granted, the Kindergarten and 1st/2nd Grade class are up there because of the music I taught them-so they didn't have a choice in the matter. But the 6th grade also made it up because one student brought me a list of 7 songs from around the world. From his list I chose an electronic music piece from Finland to play for the class. Go sixth grade. Here's the piece for your enjoyment, or not! Either is okay.

This second week of teaching has been filled with even more mistakes than the first, but they've been new mistakes-and I've mostly fixed the other stuff. Oh, and you should also know that I again had a frog in my class, but this time I couldn't get him out and he stayed there through the entire day... and unbelievably, he didn't hop out until I came back at night, at which point I caught him and delivered him into dewey grass. 

I bid you adieu Internet world, I'm going to try to use the 5lbs of carrots Alex and I just picked to make a carrot cake. Most of you can predict that this will not go well for me. But hey... why not?

Teaching Migrant Students

Last Monday and Tuesday were our last two days of AmeriCorps orientation. On Monday afternoon, we had a guest speaker come and talk to us about issues affecting migrant students in North Central Washington. As a little background knowledge, this part of Washington state is APPLE COUNTRY! Literally, looking out my window right now I can see multiple apple orchards. And if I looked out another window, I would see more. Workers and their families will come from all around, especially Mexico, to work at these apple orchards. We learned about seven areas of concern when it comes to migrant students, and discussed ways in which to help these students succeed in school.

What made the most sense to me though, and what had the most impact on me at the end of the day, was a game we played called Barnga (I am still unclear on why it was called this, if anyone has any insights, you can help a girl out in the comments section below).

***Spoiler alert!! The description of this game will probably ruin it for you if you are ever asked to play it in the future. So if you think you might....not that you have a way of knowing...maybe you should not read this. Yeah...anyway...just wanted to get that out there. Spoiler Alert!!!***

To begin the game, we were split up into seven groups, and each given the directions to a card game named Barnga or Tricks. In our groups of 4 or 5, we learned how to play the game. After practicing it for a while and once we got the hang of the game, we were told that we could no longer talk while playing the game. We would play in our groups for a while, and then when the speaker told us the round was over, we would figure out who had won the most rounds of the game, and that person would move up a table. The loser at the table would move down a table. Out of pure luck, I was the winner of the first round, so I moved to a new table. And this is when things got interesting!

As soon as I got to the new table, I realized that they were playing a different game. The format of the game was the same, but it was clear that the rules were different somehow. BUT WE STILL COULDN'T TALK! So I had no way of telling the girls in the group that I didn't know how to play, and that they were not playing by my rules. Anyone realize the point of this game yet? Well, I had at that point. I was now the migrant student that did not understand the language at her new school, and had no way of telling her new classmates that she didn't understand what was going on (besides confused facial expressions and hand gestures). At this point, I did what an ELL student might do in the classroom, and gave up on the game. I didn't know what I was doing, so what was the point? (I also was not feeling very competitive, and got the point of the activity, so it didn't seem worth it to try to enforce my rules.) This continued UNTIL someone from my original table came to my new table! I was saved! There was finally someone that spoke the same language as me. So we took over that table and were able to play the game with our original rules.

A Few Things I Learned About Migrant or ELL Students From This Game:

1. It is easy for them to just give up, so they need that extra attention in a classroom to make sure this doesn't happen.

2. Likely, they are going to feel confused and helpless in the classroom depending on their language ability, so this is another reason to give them extra support and the tools they need to succeed in the classroom.

3. Right when students get used to the classroom and start to succeed, they could very likely just get pulled away and have to move somewhere else with their family, just like we would get pulled away from our card game and have to learn a whole new game at a new table. Although the student may know the language better at a new school, it is a whole new environment and culture to get used to.

4. Students will feel more comfortable when someone that can speak their native language is able to help them whether this be another student or a teacher. Luckily, at the school I am serving at, since most of the migrant students are native Spanish speakers, we have a teacher that can interpret things into Spanish for them. This is helpful for the students as well as the parents. In many cases, the students have learned English, but their parents still struggle at home, especially with newsletters or informative letters that can have a lot of school jargon in them. This is where an interpreter like this becomes very helpful.

After the game, we debriefed as a group, and learned that this game is always played at orientation. The returning members played along with the game, but did not reveal the secret to the new members. People that had played it before, and the AmeriCorps staff members, said this was one of the calmest groups they had seen play this game. In the past, people had been so competitive that they have run of the room crying. This same amount of frustration could be present in an ELL student that is having a difficult time in a new school, not understanding the rules or language.

And that's Barnga! Now that we are done with AmeriCorps orientation, we still have weekly trainings and meetings until November. I am excited to get into more of a routine at my school, since from now on, most of our meetings are on Fridays. Tomorrow will be my first day in an elementary school band class! Oh boy! I better read Karlie's blog so I can learn how to teach music.