HALLOWEEN!

The low key vibe that ushered in this school year has continued to permeate all of our classroom functions. This was quite apparent on Friday as Halloween came and went without the overstimulation that usually accompanies it.

Children did, of course, change into their costumes (superheroes, princesses), we shared both scary and funny Halloween stories and I am sure I saw a candy bar or two but it was all done in a vedy, vedy, civilized manner.

As is the tradition in our school, children do not change into costume until after lunch.  At that time we can have celebrations (or not) until the school wide Spirit Day! assembly.  Everyone gathers together to parade their finery, class by class, while others cheer and 'ooh' and 'ahh'.

This year I decided to be an old tyme baseball player (Go Phillies!) and Lauren was a court jester.

I must say that wearing a baseball uniform and swinging a bat is much more comfortable than wearing a big, yellow hat and cradling a monkey like I did last year when I was The Man in the Yellow Hat from Curious George.

In the midst of all this I began to do some research for my current doctoral class - Reading and writing as Psycholinguistic Processes.  I am going to compare the reading processes of an emergent reader with a skilled reader in terms of verbal protocol, miscue analysis, comprehension, conceptual signs, phonological awareness and retelling.  Lauren has agreed (Thank you!) to be my skilled reader so I recorded us reading a story together so I can analyze her 'online' reading.

I am including it here for several reasons:

1) It is a Halloween story.

2) There is an ongoing question about how we promote and support bilingualism in English and American Sign Language when one language (ASL) has no written form.  This fact makes our school program different from other bilingual programs where both languages are written and spoken.  The solutions are not always easy or mutually agreed upon.  However, one thing we do is to provide read alouds utilizing both languages as you will see in the video below.  At other times the read aloud is done strictly in American Sign Language without voicing.

3) My mom likes the book The Hallo-Wiener.  It makes her chuckle. And since my last post did not make her chuckle, I thought it was time to redeem myself. So, this is for you mom.