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.