Today kicked off our first official day of stations where I actually limited the number of children per station and it worked out pretty well. I need to make sure I figure out a rotation so that there is more of a system dictating who chooses their stations first. Since it's choice time, I don't want to assign stations, but I do want to allow children access to stations they are interested in and I also want kiddos to try out different stations in the room. If I just call names randomly, I feel like I am not giving all children equal access to pick their first choice. The most popular station by far was the kitchen area, which I opened today for the first time. It was so cute hearing the scenarios they were thinking up as they played. I had the kids stay in their station the entire time, but once they get used to it, I will ring the bell after fifteen minutes and have them cleanup then switch to another spot.
While the kiddos are in their stations my plan is to pull small groups, but since today was the first day, I didn't do that. I worked 1:1 with some kiddos doing a part of an assessment with them in the morning and then supervised 2 kiddos painting at a time in the afternoon (I had a parent helper do that in the AM!). Tomorrow I need to do some more assessing, but since the classes are smaller during the pullout time, I am hoping it will be a great time to be productive and get in some extra practice with the remaining kids. It's really hard though because I feel badly that the kids that leave do not get playtime and if I try to do assessments or certain projects when they are gone, they are behind once they return. Having those kiddos leave today just made the day go by even faster! Goodbye flexibility in the schedule! I really need to be on point with timing and I hate when we run out of time and have to move onto something else when the kids have not finished something.
Tomorrow after school I start my fall doctoral classes....I always get really excited to start classes and I am definitely excited to meet this year's cohort because I am doing some of my first year core courses with them in addition to second year core courses with the cohort that I already know. I already know one of the teachers who I will take class with this term, so I am excited for her class. I know once I get going I won't be super excited about all of the assignments, but I do enjoy the back to school feeling! Tomorrow my roomie and I are going to spinning class at 5:30 am so it is going to be a LONG day!
2 comments:
Stations are always so fun, aren't they? If you're worried about the kids trying different ones, you could create some sort of chart where the kids color in which station they did. Then you could tell them they have to color in 3 (or whatever number) different boxes per week. I don't know if that made sense but I could visualize it in my head :)
One of the most annoying things I remember about half day was the fact that we never had enough time to finish things and I always felt like I was rushing the kids.
The stations sound fun though- I need to work on my kids trying new things in the classroom. I change up who gets to choose first, but if they want to go to lego every day, I totally let them- bad!
Post a Comment