The Opportunity

What I love most about the job, after my students, is my opportunity to be a learner. I learn everyday. It requires that I am open to the idea that there is still mountains of learning for me, and many days, my best teachers are my students.

Take our spelling today. We were looking for challenging plurals in our text. What the "textbook company" had wrong, we figured out. We had the plurals that follow the usual pattern and you add s or es. We decided we would underline these patterns. There were words that followed our challenging pattern, where it was "datum" and we changed it to "data". It was a "um" to "a" change. These we decided to circle. Then there was a plural pattern that we didn't have a name. These are the plurals that don't change "irregular plurals" from singular to plural, like "deer". It doesn't matter if there is one deer or a heard of deer, it is still deer. These we decided it was a squiggly underline would identify the irregular plurals.

Where the learning begins is in the conversations. As a class, determined that "leaves" was a plural that adds s/es. We moved on. Later, a student came to ask a question, "Isn't leaves a challenging plural?" Open to the idea of learning, I asked, "Why?". He explained, "Leaves is originally spelled with an f, and we change it to v ..." So, this student became the teacher, and he explained to the class. What a GREAT day of learning - when the students become the teachers, and everyone benefits!!

Note, our spelling, we started with naming the assignment, "Spell Wk.3 Read". Then we took notes about what our learning focus for today would be. We did the first paragraph together. Then students worked with partners. We would "meet" as a whole class and share what we found with our partners. In this way we moved forward. Some of our best learning happens when we have the chance to work with others, to talk, to explain, to listen, to think ... we take advantage of our opportunities.