Adventures in substitute teaching: Green Cats and Invented Spelling

I was substitute teaching for a kindergarten class. In each of the kindergarten classes, there is a teacher's aide full time assisting the teacher. As a result, it is fairly simple to sub for these classes, because the aide knows all the routines and standards.

The teacher left me an assignment for the class: Practice writing D, d, and use d in a sentence. The practice sheet had lines for practicing D, d, then "dog" then room for your sentence. There was a box at the bottom of the page for the students to draw a picture. There was a step by step model of how to draw a dog.

The aide pointed out that the students' spelling words for this week are the "-at" family- so, cat, mat, rat, sat.

I encouraged students to think of sentences that would include "d" words and also words from the "-at" family.

The aide layered on the idea that the picture- which was to include a dog (and I modeled the step-by-step instructions on the whiteboard)- should reflect what was written in the sentence.

These instructions were getting pretty complex, I thought.

I had the aide model the forming of the D and the d, as I know that the students are taught specific strokes in a specific order and I didn't want to confuse them.

So, finally, the students are busy writing and drawing. I move from table to table checking the progress of the students.

Seeing a student has written "I hav a dog" I asked the aide, do we correct spelling? And she replies, if you can sound it out, we don't correct the spelling.

Okay.

So the students move on to the drawing and coloring. Students bring up their work to the aide for the final check before putting the work in their folders.

A student shows the colorful work of "the dog sat on the cat".

The cat has a voice bubble that says: "AHHH!!!!"

The aide says: I don't know any cats that say "AHHH!!!!" - cats say "meow"- go fix that.

?!?!?!

(I have never heard a cat say "meow" either.)

Then another student brings up a picture with a colorful drawing which includes a green cat.

The aide says: Are cats green? No they are not. Go fix that.

And students who have a yellow dog have to fix it.

And students who have a red dog do not have to fix it- because of Clifford the big red dog.

!?!?!?!

And I want to say: Have you never seen Picasso's blue period work?

Have you never seen ERIC CARLE?

But, I am only a sub.