Inspiration comes from the oddest places

My Youngest daughter was in a play called "Up the Down Staircase" this past week. I had no idea what the show was about, so I went in not sure what to expect. Watching the young girl playing a new teacher in a classroom of adolescence was interesting and brought back so many memories of my first year teaching. The contrast ended there though as I taught a classroom of 4 year olds. The story was touching and one line in it really got me thinking about the children I see every day. The seasoned teacher told the new one to look past what the students were saying to hear what they were actually saying. In PreK we need to look past the actions to find out what our students are saying. Since our students are just learning to express themselves with words, they express themselves best in actions. Looking on my classroom it made me think differently about how I can best teach them and the tools I need to provide to help them learn to express themselves. As I am thinking and brainstorming I decided to write a list of ways for them to do this:

1.  Do I have out clay and/or play dough for the children to manipulate in ways where they can talk about it learning to use their words and getting thoughts into a tangible creation they make themselves? 
2.  Do I have our paint and drawing materials for those artistic children and the not so artistic children to experiment with and learn there are multiple ways of expression?
3. Are there multiple writing opportunities throughout my room? 
4. Do my students know that I view them as capable writers and authors? How can I show them that they are capable?
5. Do I offer opportunities for them to resell stories and have those books our for children to look at themselves or are my stories I read only "teacher" books?

I will keep thinking of my questions and post as I think of more. I think this is a good start for me. Monday I will look around my room looking for evidence if these things and what I need to do to make sure that these things are evident in my own classroom. As teachers, we should always be reflecting on our classrooms and how the classroom speaks to our students. We find inspiration in some of theist unlikely places, like an 8th grade drama show. 

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