Today’s segment of the All-School Gathering Preparation Journey is well summarized by a fabulous conversation we had before sharing today.
The diagram above helps illustrate this.
Sometimes things are “too hard”
2G can be a cognitively challenging place at times, but perhaps no more so than today:
Reading scripts is hard (decoding, fluency and comprehension) work
Reading a new script in a different format is tough (how is this organized?) work
Math’s “data and graphs” is taxing: How MANY MORE donuts does Bob have than Jane? What does “how many more” mean?!?!?
And it was relentless for 25 minutes at a stretch (the length of each rotation).
Will all three rotations maximally challenging. (Usually the mental demand various for each rotation.)
• Script style #1
When things are “too hard,” how do you feel?
2G did an AWESOME job itemizing how a person might fee when the work they have to do is “too hard” or “too much”:
Might want to give up
Sad
Might cry
Worried
Frustrated
Mad
Angry
Some adults might not produce such a lengthy, honest list!
• Script style #2
And what do people do when they feel sad, worried, or angry?
2G leapt for an abstraction: “They’d do TOO HOT or OUT OF CONTROL things!”
Which is what we were seeing today.
Lots of whirling dervishes, constantly in motion (often defying gravity), dervishes with glazed eyes!
Some students wanted to lug carpets across the street to the gym, but we didn’t feel they were sufficient in control of themselves for us to feel it was safe. They were disappointed, but understood and did not press the issue.
How do we deal with this?
2G went for the abstract again: “Try to stay in Just Right for Learning brain gear.”
it really is a journey
“The journey” is an overused image, but we feel it fits the February experience 2G goes through.
Just take reading, for example.
Students encounter text in a completely new format.
It doesn’t look like the phonics pages.
It doesn’t look like the books reading in the Reading rotation.
It doesn’t look like any homework they’ve ever done.
We can see the brains trying to understand what’s going on.
And what do I read?
The scene description?
Do I read the name of the part I’m reading?
What about the bit in parentheses beneath the name — (Wipe eyes with Kleenex) — do I read that?
Then there’s punctuation.
Reading phonics sentences or sentences from books, it’s easy to blow through the commas and periods, and to ignore the exclamation marks and question marks.
But in a group script read? Students hear the flow. They “get” banter. And ignoring punctuation stands out. They can hear it in their own reading! When your impulses still run you, how do you make yourself stop at each period?
And then there’s keeping up and/or not losing your place.
By round 3, the crania were overfull and the dervishes were whirling away.
And did we mention Morning Circle had a TON of review math before the Geography story, which had the memory-taking “I’m Going to the Moon” challenge at the end?
WONDERFUL MOMENTS
Needless to say, the day had some wonderful moments.
Our second video skit is about new students. Specifically, it’s about OUR new students: Rilen, Navie and Daxton.
OMG! This sure got everyone’s attention!
There’s a scene where the new-boy, first-day-at-school Rilen is looking at the camera while other boys — old HNS friends — are high-fiving it and celebrating being back together. When the groups read, “… and the boys don’t notice Rilen,” we’d get responses like, “That’s so mean!”
Which lead to discussions of what it’s like to try to join a group that’s been together for a long time.
2G really listened.
This wasn’t a story about some fictional girl named Sally who went to some fictional school and spilled (fake!) purple paint over her fictional dress.
This was a story about OUR FRIENDS: Rilen, Navie and Daxton.
Whoa…