Split class

During my own elementary years...

(you know, back in the Dark Ages)

...I attended a very small school. My 1st grade year was spent in Ms. Johnson's class. She has one small group of tiny desks facing one chalkboard and another group of larger desks facing a different chalkboard. The tiny desks were for us first graders and the larger desks were for a group of 3rd graders. She split her time and attention teaching both grades.

The very next year, I moved to the bigger desks because that year she taught 1st and 2nd.

I wonder what she felt going into each year. What grade levels would she have? How was she going to get each group to focus on their own work while she taught the other side of the room?Should she should get a bigger paddle?

(Remember this was the Dark Ages.)

We're starting school this week. After last week's cleaning frenzy, my house is mostly clean and I've been working on getting all of my school stuff organized. At the end of the school year, I tend to just shove everything out of sight because we are so ready to be done with it. The beginning is when I'm motivated to clear out and organize. So I've been tossing old folders and pulling out the boxes of curriculum I kept from K's first grade days.

My books are neatly shelved in my new yellow cabinet and the forms I need to keep for the state are mostly done. I need to get in touch with their office during business hours to reopen our school and add L to the roster. Since kids don't have to be registered until the school year they turn 7, she's never officially been to school. Actually, I never officially closed our school when K went to public school last year, so I need to find out how that's going to work. And I need to unenroll K from her elementary so they'll stop calling me and sending me forms for free or reduced lunch.

There's still much to do for lesson planning. One friend commented that she had her lesson plans completed through Thanksgiving. Sigh. I've got most of the first 5 days. For K. Ah well, we don't start until Wednesday and I've decided this week will just be getting started with the KONOS curriculum. That's been the most difficult to pin down and I'd like a few trial days to see how it works for us.

The idea of teaching 5th grade and 1st grade is a bit daunting. At least I've gone through 1st grade before with K and all of L's phonics, reading, and writing will be taught by a teacher on video. A teacher who has the patience to repeat and repeat and repeat. That will keep L occupied while K and I work on her math and language. This is the year of diagramming sentences, the thing I hate the worst about grammar. And yes, I did buy the teacher key for her language book; I stink at grammar.

Another year of split class. Maybe we should celebrate our first day of school with banana splits all around. Yep, I'm definitely putting that in my lesson plans.