leap year

I substituted in Ella's kindergarten class this morning. There are fourteen five and six year olds with lots of very important information to share. We did calendar time, read and wrote a story, and did show and tell. We talked about leap year and lion's skeletons and had an overall wonderful time. I stayed for their music practice, and they sang about trees and a song about making a significant difference almost made me cry. I heart that peace loving school.

We had Ella's parent teacher conference this week. She has already achieved the reading goals for kindergarten and has strong math skills. Her teacher said that she is responsible, well behaved, and a pleasure to be around. Sometimes I wonder who she is at school? Apparently she is neither sassy nor demanding.

I heard something a few weeks ago that reassured me one hundred percent about the school choice we made in the fall. In the public school the student teachers are being used to tutor the middle fifty percent of classes in "bubbling"--filling in the scantron sheets for standardized testing. They are also learning test taking strategies such as which answer to bubble in when you do not know the answer. The lowest achieving twenty five percent is not tutored and neither is the upper twenty five percent. Someone thinks that this strategy is the best way to achieve the goals set forth by No child Left Behind. Ella's day is filled with reading, math, spanish, science, social studies, music, writing, and even just plain playing outside. There are no report cards or standardized testing, units are theme based instead of skill based, and the teacher is always open and available for questions or concerns.

On thursday the lower grades went to the middle school classroom to "experience" their giant 3 D model of an atom. Ella is not completely sure than she didn't shrink down to Alice in Wonderland proportions to actually enter the atom.