Week 16-December 6th-10th, 2010 and Inquiry

This was my last week at my PDS and I did not realize that I would feel so sad. It’s amazing to me how much I have learned this past semester and how much I have gotten to know my students. I am very interested in coming back to my classroom next semester and seeing how different the students have become and where they are with their Reading and Math skills. My mentor teacher says that I will definitely see a big difference. I am waiting on my feedback from my small group leader on my Inquiry. She will have this back on Friday and then I will have the weekend to work on it to submit the final copy on Tuesday. I am very pleased with the topic I chose for my Inquiry. It was truly a skill that needed worked on in the classroom and I believe that the majority of the students benefitted from my research and activities. I am looking forward to next semester and working on the contract hours that I have planned-I am very anxious to start the co-teaching and have different experiences. I am continuing my Inquiry project with all the Kindergarten classrooms at my PDS and I am anxious to see how this will go. All in all, I had a great semester and too many positive experiences to name here. I feel that I have grown as a teacher. I learned so much this semester about teaching strategies, classroom management techniques and differentiated instruction that I can continue to use in my teaching career.

Week 15- November 29th-Decemeber 3rd, 2010 and Inquiry

This week is my last full week at my PDS and my mentor teacher has taken over all responsibility of teaching. I am now observing in the classroom and I also got the opportunity to observe in the special education classroom, which was a different experience. Next week, my last day is Thursday because I started the semester on August 16^th. I am having mixed feelings about leaving my placement. I have learned so much this semester from my mentor teacher and from my experiences. I have really learned a great deal about the development of Kindergartners and I think it will be very interesting to visit this classroom in the Spring and see how these children have grown. My favorite thing to see is the invented spelling that the students use in their journal writing. It’s so interesting to me that even though the words most of the students write are not spelled correctly; I can still read and understand what the students are trying to say. The students in my PDS classroom really do a nice job of sounding out words and are constantly exposed to this in the classroom. My mentor teacher has been teaching Kindergarten for many years so she really provided me with a positive experience and showed me one of the best ways to teach Kindergarten students.

My Inquiry project is completed in the classroom. I have collected all the final data that I need for my write-up. Every student but one increased on the number of missing number sequences that they knew however, I came to the conclusion that I cannot say if this is the result of my study/activities in the classroom. I am going to continue my Inquiry project for my contract next semester. I am going to implement a “Math RTI” in Kindergarten and pull 2 students from each Kindergarten classroom. I am very excited to start this and see the effect that this has on the students learning the different classrooms. I have completed a draft of my Inquiry write-up to turn into my small group facilitator for feedback. After I get this back from her, I will be able to complete my final write-up and polish what I have.

Week 14- November 15th-19th, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, I am just teaching Math. My mentor teacher has taken back over everything else. However, on Thursday and Friday my mentor teacher was at a conference and we had a substitute. I took over full-time teaching of everything again. It was interesting to get back into the swing of teaching and interacting again with the students on another level. Friday was the last day before Thanksgiving break and it was interesting to see how the students acted on this day before a break. I am anxious to finish my time in this classroom but I will be sad when I have to go. I have truly learned a lot of valuable information that I will always take with me and remember. I am working on completing my final missing number assessments in the classroom. I have started working on my write-up and am making charts and tables to display my results. I am struggling with figuring out which anecdotal notes to use in my write-up. I wrote down anecdotal notes on every child while they were working on missing number activities and I am currently trying to select two students’ notes who I think show a good progression of understanding with the activities. I understand that research does not have to show “perfect” outcomes but I truly had some students in the classroom who improved greatly with the understanding of this concept. I am going to work on my write-up over Thanksgiving Break and begin to compile the results of my study.

Week 13, November 8th-12th, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, my mentor teacher took back some of the teaching. She stated that with Kindergartners, she likes to slowly take back certain aspects of the curriculum. I have been taking this time to observe the students and think about how much they have changed/grown since I started in this classroom. I also like to observe the way that the students respond to my mentor teacher since I have been teaching for a while in the classroom. Next, week my mentor teacher will take back Shared Reading and I will be responsible for Math instruction in the afternoons. I am sad to see the semester ending so quickly and I am curious to come back into my classroom next semester and see how different the students really are.


I have also decided to narrow my Inquiry results to the students who are in the red and yellow groups on mClass Math. I conducted my activities with the whole class but after thinking, many students were on level for the beginning of the year with missing number (green). So, my mentor teaching and I decided to assess how the students in the red and yellow groups have improved or not improved. We are also working on Progress Monitoring (re-assessing red and yellow students) for my Inquiry project this week and next week. After we get this done, I will then be able to compare these scores to the initial scores for the beginning of the implementation of my study. I am anxious to see how the students score on the “final” assessment. I want to see if my Missing Number activities have made any impact on the students. Although, I will never be sure that my activities were the only things impacting student performance on assessments.

Week 12- November 1st-5th, 2010

This week is my last week of teaching everything at my PDS . My mentor teacher and I decided to gradually ease me out of teaching. Beginning next week, my mentor teacher will take over the morning circle/calendar routine, shared writing and read-aloud. I will continue with Shared Reading and Math. The week of November 15^th, she will take back Shared Reading and the week after Thanksgiving Break, she will take over Math. During the time when I am not teaching, I may go to the special education room to observe, this is not an area that I am familiar with, but I would like to become familiar with this area. We had our contract meeting this week also. A lot of good ideas were mentioned during the meeting and I think that the theme of my contract is going to be co-teaching. I am interested in working in other grade levels at my PDS and co-teaching subjects that I have never experienced. I am also interested in co-teaching using SMART Board interactive lessons. This is something that I may do in the third grade at my PDS. They have many instructional units that they do and I would like to supplement the learning using SMART Board lessons.

I have not gotten to implement any of my games/activities for my Inquiry this week. We did not have Math at the begging of the week because we had to discuss Thanksgiving, we had no school and then we had to attend a play. I am hoping to do some more activities today with the students during Math Workshop. I am unsure of how my project will turn out and I am hoping to continue it into next semester with my contract hours. The main problem/issue has been finding the time to implement the activities with so much else going on in my PDS community and classroom.

Week 11-October 25-29, 2010

This week at my PDS, I have really been working on engaging the students in the morning routine which includes the calendar and shared reading. Everything has gone smoothly this week and I quickly move the students along in the lesson and make sure that they understand the concepts being presented. We have started doing Morning Message only one day a week and the rest of the days doing Shared Writing through grammar. This week we worked on adjectives. I would draw a picture of an animal and the students would have to describe the animal using an adjective such as shape or color. I modeled how to draw a picture and write sentences about the picture, which is what students do in Writing Workshop. I also modeled how a sentence starts with a capital letter and has a punctuation mark. The students seemed to really enjoy this kind of writing and the opportunity to come up to the pocket chart and circle adjectives, nouns, proper nouns, capitals and punctuation marks. The week after Thanksgiving break, my teacher will start taking back the morning activities with the students. I have about three more weeks to work with the students and truly engage them in the learning process.

I finished my third activity: Missing Number BINGO with the students this week during Math Workshop time and I started the fourth activity: Oh No, Missing Numbers! game. I can see a progression in SOME student understanding of the missing number concept. Students are beginning to interact more in the activities and state that the activities are “fun”. I am hoping that when I re-assess the students in November, they do not forget what they have learned. The assessment is timed, which is different from the activities I present the students-they are not timed. However, if a student struggles with a number sequence for more than 15 seconds, I usually say that we have to move on because on the assessment-you are not allowed to wait. After I complete the fourth missing number game, I will begin the fifth and final activity with the students and when that is finished, I will begin to re-assess them to collect my final data.

Week 10-October 18th-22nd, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS went very smooth. I am very excited to be teaching full-time in the classroom. I am working on engaging the students in the morning routine. This is a skill that my teacher and I had discussed last week. It is hard to keep Kindergarten students attention for a long period of time and I have been working on not asking too many questions (sticking to the basics) and moving through the lesson at an appropriate pace. My teacher stated that I am improving in this area. When I notice that I am “losing” students’ attention, I wrap up and move on to the next topic. This is a skill that my mentor teacher also talked to me about. She stated that this is the best way to try and keep students engaged in a lesson. I started using new Math lessons this week on the computer. I project them on a white screen in the front of the classroom for students to see. My mentor teacher and I have been working on tweaking this routine all week. The students are easily distracted by the projector and want to make shadow puppets. We have started having some student sit in chairs around the circle and some students sit on the floor. It has seemed to work so far. The topic of 1 more, 2 more is difficult for students to master so I had to teach it two days. It was a “teaching moment” for me when I realized that I needed to go back and re-teach. I approached the topic differently and used students as models. I could see that more students understood after the second day of instruction.

Inquiry: I starting implementing a new note card system this week to keep track of my anecdotal notes, which are my main source of data for my Inquiry project. I have a note card now for each student for each activity/game that I conduct in the classroom. This will hopefully allow me to write more notes on each student and keep the notes more organized. I am working on finishing up the third activity-Missing Number BINGO. Next week, I will begin the fourth activity- Missing Numbers, OH NO! (Board game for students to play.) I am working on observing how student’s understandings are progressing as the weeks go along. I can see an increase in understanding with each activity for some students, while other students stay the same or do not understand at all. I am anxious to go over my anecdotal notes/record at the end of my study and really analyze students’ thinking.

Week 9- October 11th-15th, 2010 and Inquiry

Beginning this week, I have taken over every subject in my PDS classroom. I am very excited to be so involved in this classroom and I am beginning to know the students more. I was observed two times this week-once by my mentor teacher and once by my liaison. My mentor teacher observed my morning routine and shared reading. She provided me with some useful feedback and helped me come up with ways that I could engage the students more. We discussed shortening a few things in the lesson and providing more time for other activities. My liaison observed an interactive read-aloud/reader’s theatre that I conducted with students during read-aloud time. My liaison provided me with very useful suggestions that I would like to use the next time I conduct this activity. Not all students had a part in the reader’s theatre so I promised that we would conduct this same read-aloud towards Halloween and different students could have a part. When I do it again, I would like to incorporate the suggestions my liaison provided me. I learned a lot this week about “constructive criticism”. You have to be able to take this to further your understanding. I was glad to get suggestions and feedback on how I can improve myself and my teaching this week.


I started my second Inquiry activity this week. This activity was missing numbers bingo. The students really seemed to respond to this game better than they had the previous activities. I think this is because the students saw this activity as more of a game and considered it fun. Next week, I have another game for students to play and I think they will respond to this positively as well. The only thing I am worried about in my study is time constraints. Math Workshop time goes by quickly and there is always other activities that the students have to get done. I am just hoping that I can fit in all my activities that I need to do and make sure that students conceptually understand the missing number concept. I am excited to analyze my data and assess the students in the end to see what they learned.

Week 8- October 4-8, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, I have taken over everything in the classroom except for Math Workshop which I will take over next week. It feels nice to have a lot of responsibility in the classroom and truly put to practice the important things I have learned in my four years of college. I also feel that my teaching went more smoothly this week and I relied on my mentor teacher less to help me. I still ask her a lot of questions because I know that she still has to have input into her classroom since I will not be there the whole year. She provides me with important and valuable information and helps me brainstorm new ideas. I am learning that you must be flexible-especially in the Kindergarten classroom- because you never know what can happen. For instance, on Thursday, in morning circle and student got sick while we were standing to have a “wiggle break”. I sent him to my mentor teacher and I stayed at the front of the class with the other students to keep them on task. I was so grateful that my mentor teacher was there because I still don’t know how I will handle throw-up. It made me realize that I have to think on my toes because there will not be someone else in the room to take care of things if something like this would happen in the future.

I completed my first official Missing Number activity during Math Workshop time with individual students. It went well and students who had scored low on the mClass Math assessment actually did a good job figuring out the flashcards (some students had to be prompted however.) I only called individual students but next week, when I use Missing Number Bingo, I am going to call small groups of about three students. I think this will be good for students to play as a group and each student will have their own BINGO card. I will be anxious to see how students respond to this activity and being in a group. I also want to see if as the activities go on, students begin to conceptually understand missing numbers and the processes used to figure out the number. My mentor teacher found a TechSteps lesson about missing numbers and letters and I am going to teach it next Tuesday as a supplementary activity to the ones that I am already conducting during Math Workshop.

Week 7- September 27th-October 1st, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, I took over the whole morning routine (8:00 a.m.-9:00a.m.). This routine includes the Calendar routine, Morning Message and Shared Reading. Next week, I will begin taking over Word Wall instruction after centers and Read Aloud after Writing in the afternoon. I was very nervous this week for some reason. My main concern was time management. I wanted to make sure that I could get through all the activities in the allotted time plus make sure that students understood everything. After the first few days, I felt more comfortable in my teaching. I also think that the students are becoming more comfortable with my teaching and beginning to see me as an authority figure in the classroom. Three days this week, my mentor teacher had to be out of the classroom in the afternoon which left me to cover for her and our aide to assist me. It was very different being in the classroom and taking over subjects that I had not taught yet. I learned that you have to stay very organized and keep the lesson running smoothly as well as add transitions between activities. The afternoon is always rough in Kindergarten because they are in the mode of getting ready to go home. I know that you have to think up very engaging lessons/activities that involve hands-on or else you will not keep Kindergarten students’ attention in the afternoons.


This week I am still working on pre-activities to help with missing number. I am doing a number before, number after activity with the students during Math center time. I hold up a number (1-10) and ask students, “What number comes before? What number comes after?’ This will help with the missing number concept because the students will understand how to fill in the missing number blank when they know understand what number comes before and what number comes after. Next week, I will begin my official missing number activities with the students. I am hoping that I do not have to go back again and do more beginning activities or I may have to re-evaluate the research that I have chosen and see where to go next.

Week 6- September 20-24, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, I really started to teach more in my classroom. I have taken over the Moring routine/Calendar and the Morning Message. The students have really begun to respond to my teaching and I believe they are beginning to see me as an authority figure in the classroom. I always seem to forget one part of the morning routine and the students are quick to remind me. One day, when I was doing the leader’s “name cheer”, one student said, “Wow, You look nervous.” I was nervous that day because I had never done the name cheer before (because the leader usually does it, but it was a boy and he did not want to). It was amazing to me that Kindergartners could pick up on how I was feeling. Next week, I will begin taking over the whole morning routine before center time. This is 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and I will be conducting Shared Reading with the students. My mentor teacher sat down with me and explained everything that I needed to teach each day and I feel confident to begin taking over.


Inquiry: I began my first small group activity, Missing Number Flashcards, with the students. I got through six students and realized that I need to go back a do a simpler activity with the students. About eight students in the class scored a 0 (deficient) on the missing number assessment. Other students were either distinguished or emerging in this skill and they were about equally divided between the two groups. The flashcards I used were set up the same way that the missing number assessment was. However, the six students that came to my center did not understand. So, I came up with a supplemental pocket chart activity that I tried with students this week to get them prepared for the flash cards next week. The pocket chart activity used the hundreds chart and my teacher suggested only using numbers 1-10 until the students became more comfortable and understood the concept. I took out numbers 2, 6, 8, 10 and laid them on the table and then had students come over one at a time and place the “missing” numbers back in the chart where they should go. Students seemed to have an easier time with this activity and seemed to grasp the concept a little more. Most students got all the numbers correct with the exception of about 2 students who only got two correct. I am going to try to start the flash card activity next week and see how it goes.

Week 5- September 13-17, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, I started taking over the Morning Circle/Calendar Routine. The first day was interesting because I was unsure what to expect and I think my students felt the same way. The week before I began the routine, I observed my mentor teacher every morning and wrote down the routine step-by-step so nothing would be different for the students when I began teaching. On Monday, I was a little bit nervous, but everything went smoothly. I believe that I had control of the class and handled any problems that came up. On Wednesday, one student pointed out that I looked nervous when I was doing the name cheer. It was the first day I had done it, because the leader was a boy that day and he did not want to do the cheer. I was nervous and I was surprised that a student picked that out. The rest of the week went smoothly however. I did not forget anything in the routine and my mentor teacher said that if I had, the students would have definitely reminded me! Next week, I will continue with the Morning Circle/Calendar Routine and pick up the Morning Message with the students. I am curious to see how this will go with the students because so far, I have had a great experience!


Also this week, I started the counting and missing number mClass assessments with the students. I plan to be finished with the missing number assessments by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. After I am finished with the assessments, I can load the baseline data from the Palm onto the computer and see exactly where students are with the missing number concept and print it out for my records. I will start implementing my first missing number activity, Missing Number Bingo, next Wednesday during Math Center time. It will take me the rest of the week to get all the students through the game at my center. I have all the games and activities planned for the next five weeks that I am implementing at Math center time. They include: Missing Number Flashcards, Missing Number Bingo, Missing Number Board Game, and Oh No, Missing Numbers! (a folder game with chance cards). I am anxious to see how the students will respond to these games and if they will begin to understand the missing number concept more

Week 4-September 7-10, 2010

This week in Kindergarten, I became more involved in center time. Each day, I was assigned an educational game to play with a small group of students at center time. I really enjoyed being involved in a center during this time because it allowed me to work closely with students and get to know them and their abilities. The games that we worked on were rhyming games and the majority of the students did a great job on these. It was interesting to see how the students helped each other out if they got stuck on a word. There was no laughing or teasing involved (as I have observed in the intermediate grades.) All students were willing to help each other out.

Also this week, my mentor teacher and I planned out when I would be taking over certain lessons in the classroom and when I would start implementing my small group Math activities for my Inquiry Project. She also picked a topic for me to teach about every Friday in the afternoon. Topics include magnets, apples, friends and pumpkins. I was very happy with this and I am excited to start planning my own lessons for the classroom. On Friday and Monday, I will be teaching the students about magnets and conducting a small group activity with them. I am interested to see how the students will respond to my teaching as well as respond to the lesson about magnets. I will also be taking over the calendar routine and weather graph on Tuesday, 9/14.

Week 3- August 30-September 3, 2010 and Inquiry

This week was the Kindergartner’s first full week at school and it was better than last week. I think that the majority of the students are becoming familiar with the classroom routine and rules. We implemented our rewards and behavior system this week, which was new for most students. It was interesting to see how the students reacted to this system. I can tell that they really like the reward system which involves marbles and prizes. If the class as a whole is quiet, or gets a compliment from another teacher, they get to “put a marble” in the jar. When all the marble are transferred from one jar to another, the students get a prize. Prizes usually consist of a Game Day in the afternoon or extra recess. Also, the students have a chart for stickers. They get a sticker every day that they do not get their butterfly taken down. After five stickers, the student gets a trip to the classroom treasure box. After the class heard this, they were very excited. It is difficult because they are still trying to get into the school routine. I would say, in a few weeks, most students will know the routine and what is expected of them.


My teacher and I have decided on a topic for my inquiry project. There are four main domains of Math in Kindergarten. They are counting, number recognition, quantity discrimination, and missing number. We decided to focus on missing number because my mentor teacher said that missing number is usually the concept that most students have difficulty with in Kindergarten. We will be assessing the students in the middle of September using the mClass Math assessments. After the assessments are completed and we have baseline data, I will then be implementing Math games/activities that concern missing number during Math Workshop time. I will be working with small groups of students each day. My mentor teacher said that it would take about one week to get through one game/activity with the whole class. This will work out perfect because we are supposed to conduct research for minimum 5-6 weeks and I am thinking of using 6 games/activities with the students. I will also use the same mClass assessment at the end of my research to collect data to use to compare/contrast to the baseline data that I collected. I have collected data from counting and number recognition and it was very interesting to see the varying ability levels in the classroom. I am excited to start my research and see how it impacts the students in my classroom.

Week 2- August 23-27, 2010 and Inquiry

This week at my PDS, we finally received our students. The kindergartners came to school on Tuesday and it was hectic! I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be to get these students into a school routine. The first day of school was spent getting the students used to the classroom, the school and the classroom rules. There are five classroom rules and the students have been trying very hard this week to follow them. Mrs. DeFazio decided not to have the students “take down their butterfly” yet for misbehavior. We started this week by using 5 minute time-outs (from playtime) and this seemed to be effective for the students. Starting Monday, she will implement the classroom management system that she uses.

It was interesting to see how these students acted in the school environment compared to how they acted in their home environment. Surprisingly, a few students acted way different than they had on home visits. I think the most interesting part of the first week was to see how the students used pencils and crayons. A lot of our students had been to preschool before coming to kindergarten. However, it was amazing to see how each student held and pencil and in general, the different ability levels in the class. By Friday, I could see that the majority of the students had started to learn the routine at school. It will be interesting to see what or if the students forget the routine or rules over the weekend.

My mentor teacher and I also discussed topics for my Action Research/Inquiry this week. We discussed different options and decided on that a Math topic would be the best. The Kindergarten students work on Math in the mornings when they do their calendar/attendance routine and also in the afternoons when they work at Math centers. I started baseline counting assessments on Thursday and Friday with the students. On Monday, I am planning to work on number recognition with the students and assess where they are currently. After I get an idea of where the students in the class are with Math concepts, I will begin to implement activities during centers. We will also be doing the first assessment for Dibels in Math in September. This will also be good data to use/analyze to plan activities for the students.

Week 1-August 16-19, 2010

This was the first week at my PDS in the Kindergarten classroom. We will not receive students until August 24th so this week was spent helping my mentor teacher get the classroom ready and conducting home visits. I never realized how much work went into setting up a classroom for the school year. My teacher had worked in the classroom prior to this week and there was still so much to accomplish. I think it was important for me to observe and help with this process. It truly made me feel part of the classroom environment and I was glad to help. This weekm we also attended Investigations Math training, teacher meetings and Faculty Senate. The Investigations training was beneficial to me because this will be the new system adpoted in the classroom and I will be able to use it as well as help my mentor teacher with Math.

I was also glad that I could participate in home visits. In classes and discussions, home visits tend to be a controversial topic. However, I think that they are appropriate for teachers to understand their students. I thought it was very interesting to see how the students interacted in their home environment and it can be interesting to compare this to how they interact in the school environment. It was also great to see how proud the students were when we came to their house and most of them gave us a “tour” of their bedrooms. I am excited now to meet the students and observe them in the classroom setting on Tuesday. I am looking forward to this year and getting to know and work with the students in the classroom. I am also anxious to start my Action Research and develop a wondering that can benefit my students.