New Friends at Maplewood Manor Nursing Home

When I get the chance to sit and think, that can be dangerous....in a good way!

Yesterday, a few of my students and I, along with a few of my colleagues, went to Maplewood Manor Nursing Home to read to the residents there. We went to read and came out smiling!!

The facility is about a 15-minute walk from our school, right there in our community. It began as a thought about a month or so ago. I called Maplewood, left a message, received a call back and we set up a tentative date. We spoke of the possibility of making this a once a month thing as well. I sent out a survey to parents to gauge the interest level. There was interest.  Permission slips were sent out, I spoke with the principal, and boom!

The idea hit me like a ton of bricks that it would be better to go after school. Why? Just because. That little blurb was in the survey too. Still, there was great interest on behalf of the 5th grade families. (There were some kinks on my end that I'll have to fix for next time.  Long story short, me being too hype, I got unorganized and quickly)

We left the school around 3:15pm. But before doing so, the kids and I had a little chat. "This is the first time your teacher has done anything like this. We'll see how it goes. No matter what, just go with the flow. We'll speak, be polite, introduce ourselves and why we're there and enjoy ourselves."

On the way I allowed them to snap pics, and to snap, as in....this. Why? They're "snapping chatting" (lol) about going to read! Why not?!?

The staff was very warm, gracious, and welcoming! We entered the recreation area and immediately we all got to work introducing ourselves to the our reading buddies and the kids got to reading. My colleagues and I would only step in for a sec to move a kid closer or to slide the book between the two reading buddies. #SmilesAllAround

The kids loved it! They'd read to their new friend and in a couple of cases their new friends took the book and read back to the much younger buddies!! I even got the chance to read to a couple of the residents, "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "Green Eggs and Ham". Both were a hit!!

We stayed for about a half hour before heading back to school to the waiting arms and cars of parents! Wow! That's all I can muster right now. Wow!! It was one great experience for us all!

Today, during one of the classes we had a panel discussion. The students ran it. The panel (the students who went to Maplewood) took questions from their classmates about the event and they responded well.

The student panel

More than 24 hours later, I'm still sitting here reflecting in rapture! There isn't a test in the WORLD, no benchmark, no Pearson, no PSSA, no PARCC, nothing, that can capture the essence of that and myriad other experiences!!

Visual summaries

I did something today with my 3rd that I used to do with my middle-schoolers. We did visual summaries. I introduced it as a summary without words and just pictures. Our reading routine includes them reading a work of their choice, book, article, or magazine. Discussions with classmates about the reading follow.

Today, instead of conversing immediately afterward, they drew a "summary"; ideally, without words. After their visual summary was "written", they were to then converse about what they read using their visual representation. As classmates looked at what seemingly was nonsense, the illustrator would be forced to give details about what they chose to read.

With my middle schoolers, I would often say "draw or write about what you read". Not all the time would we share such summaries. With 3rd graders, I'm passionate about them moving and conversing quite a bit about what we're learning. I stay tucked away on a ledge somewhere as they talk, watching and listening carefully from my perch, a non-intimidating presence.

Stage a "Read In"

So, here's a John B. Kelly Elementary School room 105 tradition. It's an ELA tradition, but I didn't want the fact that I'm more of a content area teacher this year get in the way of a good tradition. Note: it gets better every year!