Classroom Progress

I spent the morning in my new classroom arranging furniture with the help of my wonderful friend Jill. We were only there for about 2 hours, but we made really good progress. There's still a ton to do, but the basic setup is good to go!

This will be our area for reading instruction. The alphabet cards and word wall will go on that wall. It looks so plain without them!

 This area is my work area with my desk and my curriculum materials. The mailboxes in front of my desk are where students put their completed work. The round table to the right is going to be my parent helper table. To the right of that table is a door leading outside. I am really excited because there is a cute little area out there that will be great for outdoor learning activities or just for working outside. It's on the side of the building so it's pretty secluded and quiet. 

My shelves clearly need organization, but I just tried to find all of my teacher manuals so they are all in one place. My stuff was moved when I wasn't there because I was on maternity leave so things are pretty much all over the place and really disorganized. 

View from the back. I am SO happy that I have round tables this year. I think they will work much better than the huge rectangular ones. 

The white cart houses our iPads and that is by the classroom door that leads to the hallway. Each kiddo has his/her own magazine bin which houses his/her iPad during the school day as well as journals, morning work, headphones etc. I put their names and photos on those and they each have a designated spot. The dark brown shelf will either have their book boxes (if I go through with doing The Daily 5 this year) or a little classroom library. 

I decided to put my second carpet at the back of the room. This will be a gathering place for story time and also a gathering spot for math introductions/review. The wall will be a place where I post math concepts and vocabulary we are working on. 

I can't wait to get back there and organize my stuff. Baby Sneaker came along this morning and slept almost the entire time, so that was helpful. Most of my belongings are already in the cabinets so my next goal is to literally take EVERYTHING out and sort by subject so that I can get everything organized. I have a lot of cabinet space, which is nice.

Although moving a classroom isn't exactly fun, I actually prefer our new home. All four Kinder classrooms are close and are located near bathrooms and the library. We have a slightly longer walk out to the buses, but we can use the door that leads outside and walk around on the sidewalk. 

Have you started prepping for the school year already?

What have you been working on? 

Moving

This year I am moving to a classroom at the opposite end of the building that has been my home for the past four years. Moving a classroom is kind of like moving a small apartment, but I consider myself lucky that this is the first move I've had since returning from Germany. 

The setup of my new classroom is different from the previous one, so I am in the process of deciding where everything will go. I am kind of excited because I like to keep things fresh and rearrange every year anyway. Tomorrow Little Sneaker is going to daycare to see her friends, so Baby Sneaker and I will head over to my school to do some initial furniture arranging. 

Last week I stopped by school to meet the new principal and I snapped a few quick (and somewhat blurry) pics of my new room. 

This is the only area  of the room that I have a vision for so far. To the right of the chalkboard (yes, that's a CHALKboard), I plan to have my carpet area. The alphabet and word wall will go along the right wall (the only wall long enough to fit all the letter cards) and the wall directly next to the chalkboard will have my reading focus wall and any info pertaining to our reading program/themes etc. I was told that the chalkboard is being replaced with a whiteboard before school starts, but I just don't get why a chalkboard has lasted this long! 

I am really excited that our amazing custodian found enough circles tables for me this year. I have had huge rectangular ones before and they are just so BIG. I think the circle ones will make it easier to maneuver around amongst the kiddos when they are working and I also think the plastic magazine bins I use for their iPads will fit more nicely on the round tables. Their buckets will almost function as dividers between students who share the table.  I will probably use the bookshelves to section off the carpet area from my desk area and I'll keep my desk over by the window.

I'm not sure what I will do with the wall in between the cabinets. Maybe that will be a good place to display student work or for our family tree. I will probably put some rectangular tables back there for small group time and for a spot where parents can work if they come to help out. 

Tomorrow I am hoping to get the carpet and tables set up where I want them jus to see how everything looks. I have a second carpet which is an oval and I'm not sure where I will put that. I like to use that carpet for story time and sometimes math when I don't assign seats, but I can't really picture where it will fit in this new room. 

I will post some "after" pics once I am done tomorrow. 

What is your favorite part about starting a new school year? 

Do you start fresh each year or keep things the same as you've done them in the past? 

App-time at Naptime: Letter School

Let's Talk

Letter School

My Kiddos LOVE LOVE LOVE Letter School!

They are always super excited to use it and it's really effective in helping them learn how to correctly form letters and numbers. 

The price of the app is $2.99 and it is money well spent!

Rather than include screenshot photos for this app, I decided to make a video because it will better demonstrate the animation.

To recap (just in case you didn't make it through the entire video)

• Engaging animations
• Self correcting--students cannot incorrectly form letters
• Includes Zaner-Bloser, Handwriting Without Tears, and D'Nealian handwriting styles
• Provides practice in uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and numbers 
• Students can use either a finger or a stylus for writing practice

Model Kindergarten

I recently signed up to get updates from EdWeek via email and today's update included an interesting link.

I highly recommend that you click on the link and watch the short video. Susan Kempton, the author of the book Let's Find Out: Building Content Knowledge with Young Children, takes you on a tour of her classroom. Let's just say it doesn't seem like a "typical" Kindergarten classroom...

I am very curious where she teaches and what kind of school it is (public, private, charter?). 

I am interested in reading her book, yet I am not sure if it would just frustrate me. 

Her classroom seems amazing, yet VERY different from my own.

No doubt, her students are learning a ton and LOVE going to school each day.

Getting greeted with a big hug follow by visits with a variety of live animals that are the classroom pets, followed by choice time to explore a variety of fun stations include big wooden blocks, sewing, and a pretend dentist's office for dogs and cats, as well as opportunities to look through tons of interesting books...who wouldn't want to be in her class?!

But, watching the video left me wondering...

How does she teach reading? 

How does she teach math?

Is all the learning exploratory and incidental? 

This strikes me as what Kindergarten should look like. Yet, in most cases I think Kindergarten no longer resembles this kind of classroom environment and this kind of learning. 

What do you think of Susan's classroom? 

What do you want to know about her teaching?

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?