Hi everyone, and thank you for following my blog, I really feel my writing has an audience and that makes it so much easier to keep me typing things every now and then.

It’s Halloween and students are soooooo excited! We have all taken part in a parade around the school. I was dressed up like a flamenco girl, I made a flamenco hat and a shawl, the Spanish mantón de manila, out of colored paper. I was sorry to hear a toddler asking me if that was a Halloween costume. My disguises are never good enough, as you can read.

Snow is here already and it scares me somehow. I am not ready for cold weather yet. I still have to purchase some warm stuff before it gets worse. Will I survive to the looooong winter snow that is looming before us? I doubt it. But I will have to struggle for survival, only this time it’s for weather reasons.

I am getting more and more confident as time goes by with regards to my classes. My kinders are awesome, they can write such good stories. I have been able to transmit the objectives for the day in such a way that students can name what they’re doing straight away. They know what I want from them. Repetition as well as visuals as suggested in the last training session have helped me do so. Suggestions from the mentor teacher to put the objectives at students’ eye level and the picture of a dartboard next to the objective of the day, are working too. They can tell a story across their fingers and write it in their paper, it seems incredible but it’s absolutely true. They come up with small moment stories which are a thousand times better than the ones I use to model for them when teaching the strategies writers use. Every morning I feel like I am taking a risk. I never quite believe they are going to get the new strategy. But to my surprise they have done so and are building up in their skills as writers as they add more and more strategies to the ones they already know.

I am looking forward to your visits. Some of you will be flying to see me soon. Thank you for making such a big effort in so many ways. It’s a long way from Spain and you will suffer from jet lag when you get here, trust me! Besides, it’s extremely expensive. So thank you again for your support. It’s a long way from California too, Just for those who will be visiting from a neighbor state.