A Pencil In My Hand and a Thought In My Head

As I mentioned before, I teach first grade. I may be a little obsessed with teaching. I love it-- creating new things for my kids, trying things that other people have tried, making crafty things for my room, reading about new strategies, and scouring teacher blogs and teacherspayteachers.com on a daily basis. Sometimes I need someone to say, "Dee Dee, let it go." This is not a 9-4 kind of a gig.

Don't get me wrong. There are rough days. There are days when three kids puke in the classroom (not the trashcan, not the bathroom, the floor). There are the days after a full moon (it does make a difference, just come and visit). But, generally I am in love with first grade.

My school has been exploring using thinking strategies with our regular curriculum. I have to make sure that I am keeping myself focused on our content, because if I skip straight to the higher order stuff without covering the basics these kiddos are in t-r-o-u-b-l-e when they get to the upper grades. You can't build a house on unsolid ground, right?

Okay... I have totally left my original thought process (see what talking school does to me?). The strategies are all about thinking while reading. This means thinking while you read a fiction story, an article, a math word problem, a science text book etc. The kind of thinking we are working on involves your background knowledge, making connections, asking questions, determining what is important, and their are several more BUT this is not a post about how to teaching.

I have told my kids, the best reader has a pencil in their hand and a thought in their brain. Real reading involves real thinking. The past few weeks I have been thinking about how valuable this truly is.

I am really working towards a consistent, quiet, focused time with God everyday. Some weeks are better than others, as are some days. I have been thinking, how awesome would it be to teach thinking strategies using the Bible? What better book to connect to, question, visualize and determine importance? It is the ultimate thinking book. I would love to be teaching my kiddos the word of God as I teach them to think.  Talk about increased learning.

Then I think, am I practicing what I preach? Do I read the bible with a pencil in my hand and a thought in my head? I have the opportunity to practice these strategies with words from God, I can't pass that up. I do this when I read professional books for my graduate classes. I take notes on presentations that are given at school. Why.... when it comes to God is that when I let my thought process slide? I want to change this. I am so interested to see how this changes my time in the Bible. Here goes, time to practice what I preach during the most important part of my life.

This is not the first time I have gained clarity from 6-year-olds and I feel certain, it won't be the last. I hope.