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.