Teach for America (TFA) is a non-profit organization that brings college graduates into schools to teach children who would otherwise be left without teachers. The goal of TFA is to help eliminate the educational inequity that exists in this country. There are not many qualified teachers who look into impoverished or high need areas across the country, leaving students stuck in a cycle of poor education and limited opportunities. I learned that last year (2014), Oklahoma started the school year with 800 classrooms that had no teacher on the first day of school. These classrooms solely relied on substitutes. How awful is that? So Tuesday I went in and did a 5 minute sample lesson (that was directed toward 1st graders) about teen numbers. I was nervous, but I think I pulled it off fairly well. So I will keep you updated on that!
Anyways...this week a few things took place. On Monday morning, our guidance counselor came in to talk about general safety. She hit on what you do if there's a fire, who should be giving you medication, and that you should never take candy from or get in a car with someone you don't know, even if they say they are supposed to pick you up. After the discussion, the children played a bingo game to show what they learned about safety. It was a nice little morning.
On Monday, we also began charting the weather! I came in with my mentor teacher over break to reorganize/clean the room and I made these:
Each day we look outside as a class and decide what the weather is that day. The color-coded thermometer also helps us make the connection between no recess days and COLD below 0 temperatures! The Next Generation Science Standards states that Kindergartners should be able to:
K-ESS2-1.Use and share observations of local weather conditions to describe patterns over time. [Clarification Statement: Examples of qualitative observations could include descriptions of the weather (such as sunny, cloudy, rainy, and warm); examples of quantitative observations could include numbers of sunny, windy, and rainy days in a month. Examples of patterns could include that it is usually cooler in the morning than in the afternoon and the number of sunny days versus cloudy days in different months.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment of quantitative observations limited to whole numbers and relative measures such as warmer/cooler.]
This gets children used to making daily observations about the world around them. It also provides the basis for noticing weather patterns throughout the year.
In math, this week, I led a number bingo game with the children. The squares held numbers 10-20. They are still learning their teen numbers and this helps with number recognition. To mix it up, I also put on ten-frames that represented teen numbers, but I noticed most kids chose not to mark those. Here is a sample:
There is one girl in our room, Marisa, who still does not know all of her numbers so I tend to spend some one on one time with her during the week. She focuses on 4 letters at a time, working on the name and sound of the letter. This week, she worked on G, T, R, and H. It is hard working with her because she has very little focus. She is constantly looking around at other children, her eyes darting from thing to thing. Needless to say, she is not very engaged in her word work. For this reason, my mentor teacher and I have been trying to work on new strategies to get her engaged. This week I made a PENGUIN! Random? Not really, the children are studying penguins and I made little paper fish with LETTERS on each one for Marisa to FEED the penguin! I introduced this new activity on Friday and she was very into it. So...success! So far...
So cute. Moving on! For my sight word group this week, I borrowed an idea from the class next door. They used Elmer's glue to write out sight words on cardboard-like paper so then kids could take a white sheet, place it on top, shade with a crayon, and reveal the sight word underneath! I did this with my small group and they really liked it! It also left them with shaded words that they could then take home and practice. On top of that, to add an extra challenge, I brought out magnetic letters so that once they shaded and found the word, they could then build the words with the magnets on top. Here are some pictures!
This week I did two read alouds: "Beautiful Oops!" by Barney Saltzberg and "Fox in Socks," by Dr. Seuss. Oh, speaking of which, did you know that March 2nd is Dr. Seuss's birthday!? he would have been 111 :) We have begun our Dr. Seuss unit and I'm loving it. Anyway, as most of the readers probably know, Fox in Socks is quite the tongue twisting book. My mentor teacher conveniently needed to go make copies and said, "Can you read this?" which left me laughing at myself with the kids in my attempts to say sentences like "When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles... ...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle." OY!
Beautiful Oops! is a GREAT book about how our artistic mistakes can be turned into new creations! I read it because we have a few artists who get quite frustrated if they mess up in their coloring or crafts. Great read and interactive!
Well, I think that's all for this week! Thanks for reading!!
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