In the classroom -- Learning by numbers

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT BEACH -- It was nonstop action in Cathy Blue’s kindergarten

class Monday at Mariners Elementary School.

It seems that is what it takes to keep the attention of more than a

dozen 5- and 6-year-olds. In less than an hour, I must have seen five

activities.

When I arrived, students were sitting in a circle, each holding a book

open to a page that he or she had selected.

When a student was called upon, he or she showed the favorite page and

either read a sentence or at least five familiar words.

Before anyone had a chance to get bored or distracted, the students

were back on their feet and at the blackboard to figure out the day’s

mystery word, which appeared as four squares with the numbers “4, 21, 3,

11” written underneath.

While I looked at it quizzically, little arms shot up with fingers

waving about. The children knew it was four letters and how to figure out

the letters.

Once it was determined that the word was duck, what with “d” being the

fourth letter of the alphabet, “u” the 21st and so on, the students went

over how to write the letters.

The teacher used the word to teach the sound of long vowels versus

short vowels and how to form vowels in American Sign Language.

Next, students put the letters’ corresponding numbers in numerical

order. Then they came up with and wrote sentences using the word “duck.”

Soon, they were on to the next activity.

They sang and signed three songs along with the morning kindergarten

teacher, Ellen Borlin.

Then they were up again to practice for an upcoming puppet show. Each

child had made a puppet head, and their parents made the body.

At one point, five children stood in a row, each with a different,

original puppet on one hand and practiced their rendition of “The Little

Red Hen.”

Oddly, the children, who probably are quite loud when out at play,

were barely audible while reciting their lines, except for a resounding

“oink, oink,” from Kevin Olson, 6, or “moo, moo” from Courtney Sayler, 5.

I was exhausted trying to keep up with it all.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education

writer Danette Goulet visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District and writes about her experience.