Week 8

May 15 – May 19

Lessons:

  1. MON: Nicholas Oldland Author Study
  2. Math: Capacity Introduction – Handfuls
    • Math Capacity1
    • Reflection & Ways to Improve:
      • Many students seemed to enjoy this personalized lesson
      • This was the second time I had asked them to estimate prior to doing the activity – this time I explained that it was important for students to estimate first because it was warming their brains up for doing the task, it was much more effective and more students remembered to estimate than the first time
      • A flaw with estimating is that I noticed some are only placing that many in their hand rather than filling it completely – many students I sent back to redo or had them show me how they filled their hand
      • One student realized that he could fit more dominoes in his hand if he stacked them on top of each other and held his hand very still
      • Several students were very focused during this lesson while they tried to fit more items into their hand – they clearly realized that placement is key while trying to fit more items into your hand
  3. No Nature School since there was a performance
  4. TUES: Story Workshop
    • Takeaways:
      • It is interesting to see some students who no longer need to play with the materials to create their story, some would rather begin the recording stage of the process
      • We also began to remind students of stories they started the previous week but didn’t finish. For our practicum they have moved Story Workshop to only once a week to allow us to do an author/book study. I do feel for Story Workshop to be successful it should be twice a week. This extra block of time allows students to finish a story, add details, recreate it with different materials, or get feedback. This extra block also gives the teacher more time to conference with students as well as provides the opportunity to create a station strictly for helping students during the writing process (if need be). This would also help in directly seeing where students need assistance to use in a mini lesson later.
  5. Book of Letters Ee
    • Reflection & Ways to Improve
      • during this lesson I had the students start by singing the ABC Rap – this was hard for some since after making sure each of their book boxes had one (putting new ones where they were needed) it became clear that the new ones were different than the ones they were used to. This meant that rather than singing the whole time some students stopped and yelled that they had a new page; in the future I think it would be better to sing this song for every book of letters
      • While I was observing the students one boy asked me how to spell ‘evolution’ he already had ‘evlo’ so rather than tell him I told him he had a great beginning and to keep working and just write the rest of the letters that he hears; when I checked back later he had erased the letters he had before, after some coaxing he finally wrote the 4 letters he had before but didn’t try any more letters. Nearing the end of the activity I told him to watch me write the word because it was a long a tricky word but made sure to point out that the 4 letters he had were correct
  6. WED: Ladybug Building
    • This activity I came up that morning. I had planned to play the insects body parts song ‘head, thorax, abdomen’ (which I did) but originally we were just going to play the song a few times and talk about the parts and add in actions, however I felt this would be too much carpet time since most of their music time is spent sitting.
    • Thus, during their music time I cut up a bunch of red and black pieces of paper into smaller pieces and collected scissors and glues ticks placing them at each table. I chose ladybugs since they had previously expressed an interest in them after reading a general book about insects and I asked them to draw me one they want to learn more about (butterflies was actually the first one but they are doing that in June).
    • Reflection & Ways to Improve
      • They knew right away that they were going to make ladybugs (based on the colors) and after listening to the song they knew they needed 6 legs and 2 antenna.
      • One student asked if he did need to make the three different body parts on his ladybug but for this activity I said no due to time constraints
      • It was interesting to see who included the wings open on their ladybug. The variety showed me the personal efforts put into their ladybugs: some were big, some small, some were heart shaped, one had triangle spots, some drew faces, and one was even made 3D.
  7. Ladybug Life Cycle
    • For this lesson I had a resource from another teacher in the community which had pictures of each stage of the ladybug life cycle and the paper they had to paste them to.
    • I showed a short video that described the life cycle and showed a mix of pictures and live videos. I froze the picture of the life cycle at the end of the video on the screen for students to reference. I also had a book that had pictures and labels of the life cycle for students to reference at the table that was farthest away from the board.
    • Reflection & Ways to Improve:
      • One student was adamant that the pupa stage came before the larva stage even after having a conversation about the legs on one and not the other while referencing the pictures (he said the legs in his were under the body); this was the only student who completed the activity with them in the wrong order – I’m not really sure how I could have convinced him to change them, giving him a new one to start again and set him up right in front of one of the references could have made the difference but I am really not sure. Where he was working was with another student who did have the stages in the right order therefore, I am not sure why he become so convinced the order he had was correct
      • I was surprised that only a few students chose to work at the carpet; however I did see many get up from their spot to go look at the pictures to check for either the color or the order
  8. Physical Health Education
    • To continue with a focus on teamwork I found a game online but modified it to suit kindergarten
    • Half of the gym was gymnastics since they can sustain themselves and a familiar with the rules and on the other half I set up 3 sets of 2 hula hoops (for the second group I moved to 4 groups which worked a little more efficiently) with a red ball at the opposite end of the gym. I split the half I had into teams and told them they were treasure hunters and the red ball was their treasure but to get it they had to move across the gym only inside their hula hoops because everywhere else was lava.
    • Reflection & Ways to Improve:
      • I should have checked on gymnastics more often but it is difficult when describing rules to a new game. That being said this game could have easily translated into a whole class game rather than just half the class and now that I’m thinking of it the mats from gymnastics could have been obstacles or safe zones for them to avoid or utilize.
      • Some students realized they could go faster by putting the hula hoop a little bit farther in front of themselves and jumping rather than stepping into the next one.
      • It quickly became visible which students could work as a group and which struggled with who would be in the leadership position or who would hold the treasure while they traveled back to the starting point
      • Making students sit out for misbehaving on the gymnastics side would have been more effective and easy since they have done gymnastics several times now
  9. THURS: TOC Day – I spend this day in a grade 3 classroom at a different school
    • My first experience TOCing went great. I didn’t have any major behavior problems and after a hold and secure I had the chance to sit down with the students and talk a little more.
    • Compared to my classroom (where I could given the age/grade difference) I found it to be very worksheet based. Additionally with the ‘3 before me’ rule I didn’t feel like I was doing much teaching during the day. However the students were independent in completing their work with few reminders and many occupied their own time once they were finished.
    • TOCing helped me realize that I really do enjoy the planning process just as much as I enjoy the teaching process.
    • I also quickly realized that I often depend on my students forgetting some of what I’ve said. For example while learning their names I said something along the lines of maybe we would play some fool the teacher game to help me learn their names (a game that I’m sure exists but I am not familiar with) and a student asked me after lunch if I had looked up the rules to the game so that we could play. I simply said that sorry I didn’t because I didn’t have time but I made sure we had time at the end of the day to play a different game (which we did).
    • My only complaint is that by the end of the day, once I had become comfortable with using all their names correctly and began to learn things about each individual student, I found myself feeling both sad and slightly ripped off. I was sad to see them go and feeling ripped off because I was just getting to know this great group of young people but that day was all I had.
  10. FRI: Lessons were rearranged a couple of times during this day. Earlier in the week we were informed that this day would be used for each class to do some writing to see what they have learned throughout the year. The students have done several of these already and knew the process. My group was set to go after recess, which meant my math lesson had to be moved to next week. The other two classes were going during the morning period.
    • Also on this day directly outside my class’s window was a set up for Rock and Roll to school event which encouraged students throughout the week to get to school on foot or wheels that were not a car. This set up included a police car and fire truck that students could explore and try the gear on. During the morning exploring time an announcement was made that they would be set up until 10 thus if any classes wanted to go check things out they still had time. My class was thrilled at this opportunity, especially the few who didn’t get to school early enough to check out the various set ups. From 9:30AM to 10AM I took them outside to check out the police car, firetruck, and collect as many stickers as they could.
    • Once back in the classroom we read The Things I Can Do by Jeff Mack as an introduction to talk about next weeks celebration of learning. I had created a flyer with the information for parents but left a space for students to personalize. The rest of the time until recess was spent drawing about what they might share with their parents at the celebration of learning. The flyers went home with students at the end of the day.
    • CELEBRATION OF LEARNING flyer
  11. Nature School
    • To bring students focus back to exploring nature prior to going outside we talked about what tools we might need to investigate nature better (magnifying glasses and tweezers). Students have brought tools out in the past thus, they knew what we could possible use. Bringing these tools out really helped them to focus on searching for insects and looking closely at nature rather than playing tag or shooting games.

    • This student had a snail on her magnifying glass and was gathering items to see what it would eat.