Story time. I like to play this, but without the video showing. I turn down the lights and have the kids do motions. Most kids love it. This year, I had a student so afraid of bears that I when I played this he ran into the pod and hid in the bathroom. I tried showing him the video with the pictures so he wouldn’t be afraid. It didn’t work. So, I told him I wouldn’t play the video again until he was ready. I asked a couple of times throughout the year, and just mentioning it made him start heading for the door. I stuck to just playing it when he was absent.
At the end of the year, I interviewed my students to make keepsakes for them with what their favorite foods, colors, and things to do were. I also asked them what they wanted to be when they grow up.
The boy that I mentioned before usually took a long time to answer when called on. I was used to giving him wait time so that he could answer. When I called his name this time, however, he immediately blurted out “I WANT TO BE A BEAR!”
It was hard for me not to laugh, and my other students couldn’t control themselves. I stopped them in their tracks and named all the ways and reasons someone could be a bear that I could think of (bear in a movie, bear voices in a cartoon, bear zoo keeper with bear badge, etc). By the end of the discussion, the rest of my kids wanted to be bears.
And that my friends, is how I develop relationships with my students.
