Kindergarten Strategies to Meet Everyone's Standards-ARLENE C. SCHULZE

Kindergarten Strategies to Meet Everyone's Standards was posted by Reading Today online. I was anticipating that the article would be about how we are way too hardcore in our academic instruction in Kindergarten and that we need to let kids play more. I don't disagree with that at all, but I was pleasantly surprise to find that this article actually talks about instruction and teaching beginning reading. 

More particularly, the article attributes reading & writing success to mastery of 

phonemic awareness (the ability to hear individual sounds in sequence in the spoken word). 

This video is really long, but I want to watch it in its entirety at some point. 

The author of the article cites research by Marie Clay.

"Clay discovered that in order for the beginning (emergent) reader to use the alphabetic principle and become an early reader, he/she must learn to inter-relate 4 emergent behaviors: language abilities, concepts about print, attending to visual information, and phonological awareness.  Clay’s research, along with Don Holdaway’s application of it, changed New Zealand from being one of the most illiterate countries in the world to being one of the most literate. It also launched Clay’s most successful Reading Recovery Program—now I call that “evidence-based research” worth trying!"

I have not read any of Clay's work (hard to believe after writing a dissertation in the area of reading), but I am interested to add it to my summer reading list. That list is getting longer, I hope I can keep up!

We definitely work on phonemic awareness a lot in Kindergarten, but what I noticed right away in the part of the video that I watched was that the teacher was using the children's names for the phonemic awareness activities. I think that's a great way to engage kiddos and have them become invested in the exercises. It's also particularly appropriate for the beginning of the year to build classroom community and help the children learn each other's names. Even though phonemic awareness is included in the core reading program we use, I always like to read what research actually says because it's really important to understand why we do what we do. I am excited to watch the whole video and read Clay's book. 

An interesting side note... while working on my master's degree in special education, we were asked to practice a phonemic awareness activity with someone for homework. I did it with my husband. It was totally mind blowing to me because I learned that my incredibly intelligent husband struggled with the skill that we call "say it fast" which is essentially hearing the discrete sounds of a word and being asked to put the sounds together in order to say the whole word.

teacher: /c/ /a/ /t/

student: cat

I subsequently learned that individuals with dyslexia struggle with phonemic awareness. It made total sense to me because my very smart husband grown man of a husband struggled with this "simple" skill. Wow. So now, when students have particular difficulty with phonemic awareness it is a little red flag to me. 

Anyway, this article left me appreciating when the words of wisdom given by a veteran teacher don't completely bash the way things currently are and focus on methods of excellent instruction that can be fun and engaging for kids. 

Whole Brain Teaching-My Questions for the Experts

I am about halfway through the Whole Brain Teaching book that I borrowed on my Kindle. I am really enjoying it and reading it really makes me feel excitement about teaching. The main part of being in the classroom I don't like is the behavior issues and the description of whole brain teaching makes it seem like a great way to reduce those by a lot. It just sounds like a fun system.

That being said, I do have some hesitations/questions about the process.

Let's start with the Big 7

Class Yes

This seems totally doable and really fun. 

Teach-Okay

 I like the idea, but I'm not sure how well Kindergartners would do it. I don't want to underestimate them, but I would be interested to know if anyone else has used this with Kinders and at what point in the year it was introduced. 

Class Rules

I definitely plan to use these. The "keep the teacher happy" is my favorite. It's just fun. The only one I'm not really a fan of is the one about asking permission to leave their seats. I don't really know if I want that to be a rule. I already downloaded some free poster sets of the class rules from TPT, but I would consider altering that particular rule. 

The Scoreboard

I am wondering if the "mighty oh yeah" and the "mighty groan" could be used in conjunction with the bucket filling system I've already used. I would not use both, but I really like how our little pom pom buckets go along with the great story that we read at the beginning of the year. The mighties seem like the fun part of the scoreboard and I kind of skipped over the chapters that talked about the various levels of the scoreboard because they just didn't seem like something I would be invested in following through with. 

Hands and Eyes

I like this as well and it seems really appropriate for Kinders. 

Switch

I use assigned partners in my classroom and I like the idea of switch, however I still think that the beginning ELL kiddos who tend to not speak during partner time will still continue to not speak. I guess this is the technique meant to really teach them that they need to communicate with their partner and I am curious how Kinders have done with it. 

Mirror

I think Kinders would love mirror. It seems like a fun way to get attention focused/get wiggles out etc. 

I also LOVE how the author described dividing students into the

alphas

go-alongs

fence sitters

and 

challenging students

I will definitely try that next year. 

One big question I have so far is with regards to the "rule cards." My interest in pursuing WBT comes from all the negative attitudes about "the stoplight" and similar behavior management charts. The main complaint is that those systems "publicly humiliate." However,  I truly don't see the difference between flipping a card color and placing a "rule card" into a child's pocket. The description of how the child who receives a rule card must stay in from recess for a certain amount of time and whisper the rule that they need to practice repeatedly just really seems weird to me. First of all, my students don't have recess so I don't have that to use as leverage, but whether a child is "practicing the rule" or sitting out, they are still missing recess. If the card is by their name, they are still be called out for something whether it is a "negative behavior" or the "need to practice something more." To me, it seems like using more positive phrasing to describe the same thing. 

I would love to hear some opinions about the rule cards compared to other "punitive" systems. I don't think the rule cards are punitive but I don't really think those other systems are punitive either. But, I do believe that if a child is misbehaving, I should not make that a positive experience for him/her. I certainly don't shame or humiliate kiddos for their actions, but I do want them to know what's not okay. With WBT I think that can be done in a fun way, but I really don't imagine myself asking my students to repeatedly whisper rules to themselves during timeout/lost play time. That just bothers  me. 

I am excited to read the second half of the book, but I would love to hear from teachers who are already using WBT.

Are there any parts that you don't like/didn't really work for you?

Do think that it is okay to use certain parts and not others or does that affect the effectiveness? 

Did using WBT really make a huge difference in your classroom/reduce behavior problems?

App-time at Naptime: StoryKit

Let's talk
StoryKit

(Oddly, StoryKit is actually an iPhone app, so you need to know that when searching!)

I love love love StoryKit and primarily use it in conjunction with narrative writing. 

Once again, this is a free app! 

When kiddos are just learning how to write, often the stories they can tell are way ahead of their abilities to write down what they are thinking.This is where StoryKit comes in. Students can use the app to record their narrative stories long before they are competent to write those stories down on paper.

What is particularly helpful about StoryKit is that a microphone icon appears on the screen for each recorded segment, so I teach my kiddos that they need to have four microphone icons on their pages. Our narrative writing rubric is based on the Common Core State Standards, so the expectation in Kinder is that students can meet the standard through a combination of writing, dictating, and drawing. There are four parts that can go along with dictation and don't require actual writing in order to get credit for the narrative, so I teach students to include those four parts in their recorded speech. 

Initially, I only have the kiddos draw and record. As they learn the letter sounds and become more competent writers, then I have them follow their app time with their journal time. They then listen to what they recorded on their iPad and write their sentence(s) in their journal. The benefit of having the recordings is that they can listen and re-listen as often as they need to. We now get a lot fewer complaints that they don't know what to write. 

Here's what it looks like...

Students click on new book to start their project. The other books on the screen come with the app, but can be deleted. 

 Each page looks like like this. The fourth icon on the bottom is the record button. 

Students press record to talk and once they do that the word on that button changes to stop. They simply press stop when they are done and then press edit to go back to the previous page. I have the rule that they can't talk for longer than 10 seconds because I want to make sure they organize their ideas before speaking and that they break up their narrative into the four parts that correspond with our rubric (what they did, two details, their feeling)

 Each recording shows up at one of the little microphone apps, so they have a visual to keep track of the four parts of their narrative. They can also access images from their camera roll in order to add a drawing or they can draw within the app. I usually have them draw in Sketchio, save their work, then import their drawing. Later in the year, I only have them record and then they write and draw a picture in their journal. 

Another idea that I had (which I haven't tried yet) is to upload an image of a graphic organizer onto the iPads so students can record and place their microphone icons within the graphic organizer once they import it into their StoryKit project. Our new phonics program, ECRI, has graphic organizers for story retelling. One image is a seal with several beach balls above his head. Having the picture in which to place the microphones will help kiddos remember what they need to record and how many times. 

If desired, they can add text to their project.

Once a project has been started, students have options to read, edit, or share. Students use the "read" function when they are writing because that allows them to listen to what they recorded. They can edit a project if they need to add more or make changes. Finally, they can share their work by emailing it. I have students email me their work each week and then I can easily forward their projects to their parents. 

I use StoryKit on a weekly basis when my kiddos do their "weekend news." Initially we only use StoryKit and then they begin to use journals for the writing part. I love that even the lowest students who don't know their sounds at all can still tell their narrative. It's a great way for ELL students to practice language and it's a great way to better understand their "kid writing" because I have the recordings to listen to as I look at their writing. I often have a hard time getting around to each child to write down what they say they have written so the individual recordings are awesome! 

I definitely encourage you to try this one out! Let me know what you think!

Whole Brain Teaching-Finally Taking the Plunge

http://eideticmemory.org/whole-brain-teaching/

I've heard so many positive things about Whole Brain Teaching, yet I have been hesitant to check it out. Why? I don't really know. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself it's because I am afraid that I will fail at it. 

There, I said it. 

It takes me back to last summer when I came across several articles bashing the whole "stoplight" system for behavior management

http://germantownavenueparents.com/2013/08/does-your-childs-teacher-use-a-stoplight-for-behavior/

articles like a letter to teachers on the use of stoplights in the classroom

and Stop the Stoplights!

and A Letter to Teachers: Rethink the Classroom Stoplight!

Many of these articles are written by parents and claim that behavior management systems such as the red, yellow, green stoplight are extremely punitive and publicly humiliate children.

I don't agree and I've used a variation of this system in my classroom with success and without publicly humiliating my students. But, the rampant concern over the use of such systems and arguments from teachers that methods such as Responsive Classroom and Whole Brain Teaching are far more successful have made me do a lot of reflecting on how I will approach classroom management and behavior management in my classroom.

This past year, I chose not to use the individual behavior management system that I had used in the past. Coincidently, I had my largest class ever (28 students) and felt like I was dealing with behavior problems all year. When I left for maternity leave I swore up and down that I would definitely revert back to my behavior management system because kids need consequences. 

Well, this article, "Behaviour management": no systems but relationships,  has again gotten me thinking about the right thing to do. The author attributes her success in classroom management to not having "systems," but developing relationships with students and providing them choices with the stipulation that choice is a privilege. She doesn't believe in applying systems and routines universally to all children and deals with every child according to what they need. 

I really like what I read and immediately began to think about how I could implement more choice in my classroom. Free seating on the carpet? Choice of partners? Choice in table spots? Choice in activities? I don't think I am too controlling, but I often make these choices for students because I think that it eliminates problems, yet maybe I am completely off base. Maybe if I allowed my students more opportunities to choose, I would eliminate some of the behavior challenges...Would children behave better if they could choose their own carpet spots? How would that work? What would that look like? I am already stressed...

So as my mind is reeling over what changes I will make in my classroom, I thought back to all the positive things I have heard about Whole Brain Teaching. I literally have never heard a teacher utter a single negative word about it. On the contrary, many teachers have said it completely changed their classrooms for the better.

So, I am at the point where I feel the need to know what the hype is all about. 

I went to my bff Amazon to purchase the book and happily discovered that it's available to borrow through the Kindle Lending Library for Prime Members. Wahoo!

Now, I have added Whole Brain Teaching to the list of things I want to dive into this summer. I am excited to learn more about it and how it can apply to my classroom. It sounds fun and exciting and I am hopeful that I can do it without failing. 

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy

Do you use Whole Brain Teaching?

What is your favorite part about WBT? 

What words of advice do you have for me as a WBT newbie?

Makeover

We moved into our house a little over a year ago and we take on organizational projects little by little as time allows. This weekend, we decided to attack our kitchen pantry. We have a pantry closet with shelves where we keep our snacks and dry foods. I don't have a "before" photo, but let's just say it was pretty messy. Not disorganized necessarily because I sorted the food by type on the various shelves, but it was very cluttered. I have a slight problem where I buy things without really checking to see how much we have left. For example, every week I buy more trail mix at Trader Joes only to come home and find that we already had a completely unopened bag right there in the cabinet. We have an abundance of certain foods and all those bags don't really stack well, so they just look all thrown in there. Not to mention the baking ingredients. All those bags that are folded over and messy looking...yikes.

I was recently inspired by a few other bloggers and returned to their posts for inspiration. Check out Amanda's amazing pantry! I am super jealous of her gorgeously organized space as well as all her baking loot. If you're not familiar with her blog, she frequently posts about yummy treats! 

(These photos are from her blog).

I was also inspired by HEAB's post called Simply Ways to Organize. These canisters make her dry baking ingredients super neat and easily accessible! This photo is from Heather's post. 

I did some googling yesterday to explore options for organizing our pantry. We don't have a huge walk in space and we already have plenty of things out on our countertop, so I needed solutions for inside the pantry closet. 

I came across this youtube video and I fell in love.

Seriously this girl takes organization to a whole new level!

Yesterday after nap time, we headed to The Container Store.

I. Heart. The. Container. Store.

Anyone else?

Whether it's for classroom organization or home projects, TCS is da bomb! 

We got the elfa Door Rack and some Click Clack food storage containers and did some rearranging. 

Check it out! 

 I think the door baskets are my favorite part because it just removes some of the contents from the shelves so things have more space. And small containers just look neater in those baskets than they do all shoved close together in a clump.

I also love the food storage containers we got. I started to label them, but then I ran out of tape in my label maker. Boo! I've got all my dry baking ingredients on this shelf plus cereal and the basket on the end contains my pumping supplies.

This shelf has our snacks, which still look a bit cluttered, but it looks better than it did. I grouped snacks by type and put them in larger bins.

Here's a shot of the overall closet. I also got some storage containers for my pasta and rice, but I still need to arrange those upper shelves a bit more. 

It feels so good to work on organizing! I just wish I was able to get into my classroom and organize more this summer. I am welcome to go whenever I want, but bringing two kiddos in tow doesn't make a lot of sense, so I am pretty much saving all my classroom organizing until the week before inservice.

Do you have a thing for organizing?
What is your favorite store to purchase organizational accessories?

Summer Reading

Education Week recently brought up the topic of summer reading and how summer reading is different for kids and for teachers. 

The article stresses the importance of making sure that books are readily available for children, particularly in places where they get bored such as the car (probably not good advice if your child gets carsick though!). It also warns against rewarding children for reading because that gives them the implicit message that reading is not a fun and desirable activity. 

Baby Sneaker (who I think I officially cannot call "baby" anymore and who will heretofore be referred to as "Little Sneaker" so that her baby sister can be "Baby Sneaker") is participating in the summer reading program through the library. She LOVES to read so we signed her up and she's been earning stickers on her game board. 

 We add one sticker for every 15 minutes we read. We always read at least two stories at bedtime and she requests stories throughout the day as we play and often before her nap as well. We definitely read more than 15 minutes per day, so she has been accumulating stickers like a rockstar. But, that's not what drives her to want to read and hear stories. She did earn two small prizes at the library for reaching certain levels, but if I put away the game board and she never got another prize, it wouldn't matter. 

We just LOVE to read in our house. 

I like how the article emphasizes that summer reading for kids/students should be enjoyable and they should read books or other print sources that interest them. Reading for pleasure is different than reading at school and reading for pleasure is important. The International Reading Association just released a position statement on the importance of leisure reading.

The EdWeek article also discusses summer reading for teachers. 

"Joshua Block reflects on the critical importance of summer reading for educators—or at least for him: In order to challenge the inevitable feelings of burnout and mechanization that I feel in June, I use summer to immerse myself in books and open myself to unplanned discoveries, ideas, and inspiration for the next school year. I aim to keep the list of books broad and include many different titles. My hope is to challenge and nurture myself in ways that relate directly to my teaching practice and in ways that nurture my identity outside of teaching."

I already posted about the teachery books I will be reading this summer and I still have quite a lot of progress to make, but I am pretty confident I am going to find some other books to add to my list of things I want to read on this cool Summer Reading page on Pinterest. There are a lot of interesting books on there! 

What's your summer reading style? 

Do you read for pleasure or are you diving into some good teachery texts?