Who's your favorite deceased person?

If you were in a 120 class at Ivy Tech, you would come to one session in the library computer lab to learn about resources. I would show you the catalog, the various periodical databases, demonstrate searches on the web, and so on. Then you would do an exercise, which would include looking up a "deceased person" in the Brittanica Online and finding some interesting fact about that person.

I can count on some names showing up every semester: George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Bob Marley, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison.

Sometimes I'm surprised - Andrew Jackson? Who thinks about Andrew Jackson? Sometimes it's obvious that people don't understant the word "deceased" - under death dates they write "not dead yet". And then there was the older woman who didn't quite understand about online reference sources - "I've looked up everyone I know who's dead" she said, "And it doesn't have any of them." Nope, your uncle didn't make the Brittanica.

So here's a midweek challenge for you: if you were to pick a deceased person to look up for my class, who would it be?

Reality check

The classroom directly across from the library door had a substitute teacher this morning. She was young and was using all the tips and tricks she'd learned in her education classes.
By mid-morning I could hear her voice very clearly.
"We are NOT running around in here!" she announced.
But she was wrong...

What we like

I'm teaching five weeks of preschool classes on Sunday mornings. This week I shared a very old story: The Friendly Bear (published in 1957!) At the end of the story wise old granddad gets ready to read a book to Matt, because that's what Matt likes, but first he gives Matt a big hug - and in the woods the bear gives his bear cub a hug - because that's what everyone likes. So we talked about what people in our family like. Then each child made a collage for one of their family members of things that person would like.The conversation was constant as they selected cut-outs and talked about what their Moms and Dads (and one baby sister) would like. They were amazingly on task. Some of their ideas were right on (notice all the "healthy food" for Kinsley's Dad) and some were clearly wishful thinking - "My daddy would like a doll and we would like to play with it"
They were so involved that their parents arrived before we even got to snacks.
And that's what I like!

Snow goons

When you do a program on Snowmen and there isn't any snow, you have to do something.

So our snowmen are built from marshmallows(yum) and held together with icing.
It's a good thing I took pictures.
Just like the real snowmen, these guys didn't last long.

Finals

For their final, my students have to give a program for childcare kids. We never know exactly how many kids will be in the group or their ages or experiences. The idea is that my students show that they can apply some of the skills they've read about and discussed this semester.

So the first group arrives at the daycare room. There are four kids there. One has wedged herself into a corner between the bookcase and the wall. She doesn't come out. Two are flipping themselves off the couch backwards. I worry about their necks. One sits quietly looking at the students with big round eyes. A listener? About 5 minutes into their presentation he announces, "I'm done" and excapes.

This is a tough crowd.

And the head bone's connected to...

This was my week for dinosaurs, and for the old bones that Mimi gave me long ago. They've been hiding in a box in the basement since I retired, but I always knew they'd see the light of day again. So when M.D. asked me to do "something interesting" for the 4th grades on the day I subbed for her, I thought about those dry bones...and metacognition. The fourth graders now think that metacognition is the name of a really cool dinosaur. My idea was to have them think about what they were thinking and guessing and shouting out as we uncovered one remnant of a skeleton and then another. Along the way, I also pointed out how people's thoughts about dinosaurs have changed. I even had a book from 1960 with terribly outdated information (all of which was sadly still firmly stuck in MY head, since that's about the time I was learning about prehistoric life. I'm sorry to note that Brontosaurus, the thunder lizard, is no more.)
Then I took the dinosaur books and bones to Wonderlab for the Preschool Discovery time. The preschoolers were wildly enthusiastic and wanted to get their hands on everything. With them, I was going for vocabulary - skeleton, fossil, plant-eater - and the idea that these giant creatures are not around any more. Don't be scared of them! Not even the big model of a meat-eating monster that stands right outside the lab door and looks as if he's going to gobble you up.
To complete my week of dinosaur immersion, I took the set-up to my early childhood class to talk about setting up environments for thematic units. (My students were not quite sure what to make of this. )

In every situation and with every class, the old skeleton elicits questions and guesses and total fascination. Someone always asks, "Are those bones real?" I say, they are real bones. I don't say they are real dinosaur bones. There's always a smart kid who "knows" what it is (A duckbill! That has to be a duckbill!)

But I never reveal the animal's identity.

How Dewey DIDN"T invent the Decimal System

This week Melville Dewey has been appearing to second graders. First we do "the Dewey cheer", then a persistent sheep comes looking for a book. Poor Dewey has to put his books in order by size - and that doesn't work - by color - and that doesn't work either. Even when he gets them in order by subject, there are still problems...

I am having fun. The second graders are still a little mystified by the "decimal" even though I drew them a picture of one.

And one fellow was so wrought up by the whole thing that he asked if there was a book about Dewey!

The school librarian says that's a first.

Sparkly Gold

All right, there should be a picture - but in the absence of one, use your imagination. Imagine a little boy, four years old, wearing an Hawaiian shirt and a buzz cut. I've been talking about cooperation and the group is tracing their hands to decorate the wall. In the jumbled box of very much used crayons, he discovers one special one - sparkly gold. He is delighted. The sparkly gold does not show up much on the dark red paper as we trace his hand and cut it out. He proudly prints his name across the palm in sparkly gold. It also does not show up very well. He glues this red hand to the very middle of our group mural. He searches through the box to find another piece of sparkly gold crayon and shows me that there are two parts of this wonderful color. As we eat our snacks he sings quietly to himself "sparkly gold, sparkly gold" over and over. When his parents come in it is the only thing he tells them about our session: "Look -that's my hand, the one with sparkly gold on it!"

Snacks

There are six preschoolers in my class on Sunday, five little girls and one little boy. They are quiet, shy, unsure of their new teacher. After the story we have snacks - animal crackers and grapes. Slowly they begin to talk, naming the animals and playing at sneaking up on the bowl to grab a cracker. The little girl sitting next to me is wearing a purple dress with ribbons. She takes one grape at a time, very precisely, and as she separates it from the stem, part of the skin pulls away. She looks at me and as she raises the grape to her mouth she whispers"I like to take the peeling part off". "Umm" I say. I look away to smile at the little boy who is creeping his fingers up to the bowl of animal crackers. When I look back she is grinning and holding up a green glob of grape which she has carefully peeled with her teeth.

The Desking Instinct

Every year when schools start, many of us feel the desking instinct stirring within us. We walk by displays of blank notebooks and unsharpened pencils and feel their potential drawing us in. "I could write something" we think, "Maybe I should take a class." We look longingly at post-it notes and highlighters, and feel an inexplicable craving for a brand new box of crayons.

This year my desking instinct was happily fulfilled by a wonderful goodie bag that was given to all the adjunct faculty.
I gloated over the treasures inside: staples! whiteout! a ruler! a red pen! a pencil box! a dictionary! and more and more - even the one thing no teacher can be without: a packet of Tylenol!
Thank you, thank you, Ivy Tech - this is one adjunct ready to set up her desk and teach!

Backwards

How to continue to make alphabetical order interesting? We've lined up by their names starting with "A" and we've lined up in reverse starting with "Z". Ah, what if I wrote their names backwards and we line up by their backward names in alphabetical order?
They are distracted during the story, looking at the strange words on the board. I can see in each class the moment when one of them figures out that those strange assemblages of letters are their names. The whispering and pointing spreads across the group. They are unusually attentive and patient lining up, being delighted as I twist my tongue pronouncing their names backwards: Enirahtac, Nosam, Ylil.
Just as I am congratulating myself on their docility, they carry my brilliant idea to the next level - spin around and stream out of the Reading Room giggling and walking backwards.