Year 3 - Day 72 - March 12

(Picture cropped beecause it's my kiddos from school!)

A couple weeks ago, a fellow LMS emailed an idea she came up with. She gave all the kids in her classes a job. Some of them are more classroom related (like handing out papers or collecting the pencils.) Other kids had library jobs (like straightening the drawing book shelf that is continuously a disaster.) I liked the idea and stole it. :)

I have only implemented it with my little guys because I had a space in the schedule where I had time to teach them how to do their jobs. The big guys are all in the middle of a project right now and I didn't want to lose the momentum. The first graders are stinking adorable. One of the jobs I have is to "help" with book checkout. I want to work towards letting them check themselves out to free me up to help kids hunt for books. Therefore in first grade I start modeling the process very slowly. "I'm zapping your name. Do you see your name on the screen? Yes? Good, then it's ok to zap your book."

So my helper sits in the spinning wheely chair (a reward in and of itself, it appears) and double checks for me that the name on the screen is the face in front of us. (In actuality, I really do check that because my scanner has been known to do stupid things like skip a number, transpose numbers, etc, and therefore we wind up with books out to the wrong kids.)

Today, I was off helping kids find books and getting ready to go over and zap books when all of a sudden, I hear the zapping start happening. It was the right pattern of beeps (you librarians know what I'm talking about - there are so many beeps but we know which ones we should hear in which order!) and the kids were heading back towards their seats. Turns out my little helper in this class decided that 3 weeks of being a helper was enough, and she was all ready to take over.

At first, I was going to tell her to stop. But I didn't. I walked over and looked over her shoulder while she worked, and she was doing it right. She was also talking out loud so I knew what she was thinking.

(Kid walks up)
(She scanned their name)
(Looks at the monitor to ensure it scanned correctly)
"Yup, that's you! Let's scan that book. Oh! Good choice!"
(Book beep)
(next kid)
etc.

So I let her do it. It was so funny.

Now I *really* don't know how there are so many problems every time I have a sub. ;)