Week 5

This week, my mentor teacher was out for two days in a row and I was basically the substitute. We technically had a substitute, but she let me lead both days. It was AWESOME. Stressful, hard, and exhausting, but awesome. It gave me a lot of confidence and I feel more comfortable about doing my leadership weeks now.

This week was pretty celebratory. Monday was our 100th day of school and Friday was our Valentine's Day celebration (plus Red's 6th birthday). In honor of the 100th day (which was celebrated on Monday but wasn't actually until Tuesday because we had an snow day), we counted a lot of things by ten. Every week we have something that the children share. This week and last they were told to bring in 100 things. This is a great way to teach counting by ones, fives, and tens. The Common Core says Kindergartners need to be able to:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.A.1 Count to 100 by ones and by tens.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.A When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.CC.B.4.B Understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they were counted.

One kid brought in 67 Legos that I painfully had to take apart to count while he played with little Lego men he built beside me. The next day I wrote the morning message, "If Carter brought in 67 Legos, how many more would we need to have 100?" Complicated for Kindergarten, but we got there using a 100 rekenrek! A rekenrek is an abacus-like tool to help children count and group 5's and 10s. It looks like this:

I love rekenreks. They're really great. And kids love them so that's a plus. Another 100-day activity that I planned and led was making a 100 circled caterpillar. It was a good activity, but I did not plan it that well. I basically had 100 circles cut out and I pasted one--a caterpillar face--onto a large white sheet of butcher paper. The plan was that, as a whole class, we would piece together a caterpillar 100 circles long. Each child got five circles and would paste them on and write the number that it was themselves. This would give them practice in writing numbers and sequencing. It was a good plan, but having it as a whole class project at the same time was a disaster. Basically only one child at a time could come up, paste on, and write. This meant that 18 other students had to wait patiently on the rug. Kindergartners do not sit still for very long so needless to say, the class got a little crazy! It was fine, just not what I had in mind. If I could change it I would have them write their numbers back at their tables independently and then maybe bring a group of children up at a time to paste their parts on. The finished product was this:

Ta-Da! It's now up in the hall. Ultimately, I'm just happy that I was able to lead the entire class for two days relatively successfully! Oh--Also, a student figured out how to put this together :)

She knew my name has two N's, but could not find the other one. I love my kiddos.

Oh! This week we also began our Post Office unit. We have an area of our classroom that we have designated as the Post Office. Children can write letters to one another and then mail them in our cardboard mailbox. The line leader and line ender are the two kiddos responsible for sorting the mail each day and letting people know if they have mail. This is a wonderful way of getting students excited about writing and wanting to make sure their message is clear. The common core states that Kindergartners should be able to:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.K.1 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book

Our post office writing counts as opinion pieces.

Week 4

This week I started a small sight word group! In the Common Core State Standards, Kindergarteners should be able to do the following:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.3.C Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do,does).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.B Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.D Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.1 (This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.2.E Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.

These are all reasons why a small word group is helpful.

I work with four children during reading time. I reviewed their scores from an assessment and I am focusing on four kids who all got about 8-9 out of 26 sight words. Apparently that score was completely expected for Kindergartners last year around the same time, but this year it is viewed as being behind. So that's fun...On Tuesday, we simply went over sight word cards and I had the group get familiar with the ones we would be working on. Two of the children were a bit unfocused (they're bouncy kids), but two were rather engaged and wanted to play with the words even after the allotted time, making "sentences."

The second day, we played word memory game, but I think I made it a little too challenging by adding too many cards to work with. I tried again Thursday and we played with fewer cards which seemed to keep them engaged during the game. Another accomplishment was that on Friday, one of the little boys in my group was listening to a picture book with me and was shouted out two sight words he spotted within words. For example, seeing the word "and" in the word "sand." Pretty neat!

A big cause for celebration this week for me, however, was watching a specific little girl remember how to write the letter R. She has been working on remembering the letter R for the past two weeks. She is quite behind in the class, as she still doesn't have some letters. She is on the track of getting special services. Her memory is really poor, as she can't remember the name of a letter that you have been working on every day for a week straight. So...with that background, this was a big deal. This week we opened the "Post Office" in the classroom, encouraging children to write notes and letters to one another that will then be delivered to their mailbox. Caught up in all the excitement, this girl, Marisa wanted to join in on the fun and write her own message to her mom and dad. She told me, "I want to write 'I hope you are having a good day mommy and daddy!'" She knows the letter I, H, O, P and "you" is on our sight word so she got to "I hop you" then the needed "are."

"What letter do you hear in the word are?" I ask
She looks at me and shrugs. "I don't know..." She says, but then goes, "Oh Wait! R!" and writes a letter R. I shout, "MARISA!!!!! YOU REMEMBERED THE LETTER R!!!! I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!" She looks up at me with this huge smile and we run over to my mentor teacher to relay the excitement. Here's the artifact:

So that was exciting! (Her b's are supposed to be d's to spell daddy. It phonetically sounds like dade. She was looking at our sight word chart which has mom and dad on it.)

One more rant before I go. We have a new para in our room as of two weeks ago so the dynamics of the classroom are shifted a bit. She is very odd and I do not think she should be in this educational role. To give an example, Ronald came in one morning and throws all his stuff on the floor. The para goes, "Oh, Ronald, let's not throw that." and my mentor teacher sends him to his table so he is out of the way while the other children get ready. He often gets rowdy and kicks or throws things when there are two many people in the cubby so this is a logical consequence. "You can get your stuff put away when the area clears out," my mentor teacher says. And THEN! The para comes over and says to him, "Aw, Ronald, I feel bad that I got you in trouble!" in this dramatically sad voice. She proceeds to sit down next to him and have this sweet buddy buddy conversation! What!? This is just one example, but she is consistently putting herself on the child's side even when they are doing something bad. She'll try to coddle and baby them and does things for them that they can do themselves. It's just frustrating and my mentor teacher is freaking out a bit about the new dynamic.

Signing off,
Miss Meghann

PS: Next week, Sonia (my mentor teacher) will be out of the classroom Monday afternoon, all day Tuesday and all day Monday! AHHHH. I am not the official sub, but I will be pretty much in charge since I know the routines now. Wish me luck!

Week 3

This is a tad late (by a week), buuuuutttt...

I just want to run through my third week before I get too behind in these postings. Last week was pretty swell, but the biggest thing of note was a situation on Friday. My mentor teacher had a 45 minute meeting in the morning, leaving me alone to lead the kids, including morning meeting. This was quite scary and yet exciting! All in all, it did go well. There were some issues along the way though, including three boys who simply refused to follow my direction during a transition. We will call them Kinley, Ronald, and Mitch.

Ronald in particular refused to clean up and got his two friends to fool around as well. Ronald danced around with some building gears between his legs, pretending it was his penis. So that was fun. I felt comfortable telling him to go to his desk. I think I feel more comfortable disciplining when my teacher is out than when she's watching me. Not that she would mind. She would reinforce it, but there's just a greater sense of freedom when I'm on my own. Aside from the penis boy (We will call him Ronald, but not sure why), the rest of the morning went rather smoothly. I led the meeting, got children to come up and highlight sight words they recognized in the message, and got them through a second transition and line up! Oh, and I took attendance! When my mentor teacher came back, she pulled out the three rowdy boys to sit them down and tell them how disappointed she was. Kinley even started crying. Ronald got the privilege of being the line leader taken away that day (This is a coveted job, as you get to take home the class stuffed animal when you get chosen as the line leader...not to mention, who doesn't remember wanting to be the first person in line?) My teacher is very good about following through with consequences and making them make sense. If you can't handle a responsibility/privilege, you WILL get it taken away.

Anyway, all three children had to look at me and tell me they were sorry after answering the teacher's question, "Did you make Miss Meghann's job easier or harder?" It's amazing how remorseful they become when they let the teacher down. I hope I will soon have that power over them too, but we will see.

In other news, a child made a snowman this week that was supposed to be me:

And for one of my read alouds, I read "Tabitha's Terrifically Tough Tooth" by Charlotte Middleton. We had two kids who had some terrifically tough, but loose teeth this week. It was relevant and a cute funny book.