Week of March 17th

Conferences

My first day of student teaching (oh so long ago) it was conferences night. I had only spent one day with the students and my head was spinning with information and a school day worth of experience. I enjoyed sitting in on conferences and meeting some of the parents of these students I have gotten to know so well. 

On March 20th, we had conferences again. Talk about night and day! This night of conferences was such a wonderful experience. I was able to participate in each conference, share my experience and observations of each student as well as meeting more parents. I loved seeing and being able to share with parents the progress each student has made from the beginning of the school year to now. 

St. Patrick’s Day

I gave each student this little note and a stick of gum for St. Patrick’s Day. 

On St. Patrick’s Day, we read stories about leprechauns, learned how the day was originally started, and watched a video on the annual event of coloring the Chicago River green.

Reading

In honor of the first day of Spring, I combined rhyming, word families, and flowers into one reading lesson. Each student was given a flower that had a word ending in the middle. The word endings included -it, -an, -ap, and -at which was in the center of the flower. On each petal around the flower, students wrote a word using the ending they had been given. After all of the petals were filled in, students discovered that all of the words they wrote rhymed!    

March 10th - 14th

Hardly seems possible how many weeks have already gone by! Each day I learn more, do more, experience more, and grow closer to my students. Week by week I am teaching another subject as I work towards fulling “taking over” the classroom for two to three weeks. 

Monday (March 10) was an inservice day so it seemed like a shorter week than normal. On Tuesday, the students had an awesome day! I was prepared for behaviors that would reflect a three day weekend but was pleasantly surprised.     

Reading this week was focused on a Phonemic Awareness Curriculum. Lessons centered around the book “The Relatives Came” by Cynthia Rylant. On Tuesday, the class learned three vocabulary words that were taken from the story. During Daily 5, students were encouraged to incorporate these words into their writing. 

To teach the vocabulary words, each student created a three page mini book. Each page focused on a different vocabulary word. The vocabulary word was written at the top of the page then students used the word in a sentence and finished by drawing a picture to help them remember the word. 

Measurement - Math Unit

I can’t believe how long it has been since I last posted!! Life sure got in the way the last few weeks. Here is what was been keeping us busy in kindergarten…    

One of the biggest requirements of students teaching is completing what is called TPA (teacher practitioner assessment). In short, I have to develop and teach a five day math unit. I took a small breath of relief after writing the lesson plans for the unit and an even bigger breath after teaching it! My unit was on measurement and using non-standard units. The unit was a broad introduction to measuring for the students. I developed a variety of activities for the students that allowed them to do hands on learning throughout the unit. I also introduced one or two vocabulary words each day that students learned and used repeatedly during the lesson for that day.

Day 1
The first day I focused on taller and shorter than. Students were given an activity sheet with their picture on it. They needed to draw a picture of something that is shorter or taller than them. A sentence was at the top of their paper that read “A ____ is taller (or shorter) than ___.” In the first blank, students wrote what was taller or shorter than them. Students completed the sentence by writing their name on the second line. 

(I thought it was very smart for that this student drew a line from the top of their head to the side of their paper so they visually see that their picture was shorter than him.)

(Students were allowed to use phonetic spelling as long as they stretched the word out. This students wrote "maws" in an attempt to stretch out "mouse".)

Day 2
Stations were set up for students to rotate through. The first station was QR codes I developed. Using a paperclip, students measured the length or height of school supplies. First, students measured each item then checked their answers using an iPad and the QR code. 

Station two, focused on each students name. Each student measured the length of their name to practice measuring with a variety of objects.  

At the last station, the lesson and activity focused on ordering objects from longest to shortest. Students were given a bag of six or seven objects and asked to put them in order form longest to shortest. Then we rotated bags so each student was able to have lots of practice (there was a total of seven bags that each had different items for students to place in order).   

Day 3
“How long is a foot?” was the topic for day three of the unit. I read the story “How Big is a Foot?” by Rolf Myller to the class. This is a story about a king who wanted to build a bed for his wife’s birthday but after several tries, the measurements for the bed still were not right. So, the king’s apprentice must figure out how to build the right size bed. During and after the story, we discussed how the king’s foot could be a different size than the apprentice’s foot and how this affected the construction of the bed. 

Each student measured their own foot so we could compare the different size feet within our class. Students used a paperclip, lego, cubes, and an item of choice to measure their foot.  

Day 4
Today, students were able to use an actual ruler! Pictures of animals were hung around the classroom for students to measure using their ruler. We came back together as a class at the end and measured each picture together. This allowed students to check the measurements they recorded and also visually reinforce how to line up and read a ruler. 

(This is the recording sheet students used)

Day 5
The fifth and final day centered around assessing what the students had learned. As a class, we measured a variety of pictures of objects on the SMARTBoard using nonstandard units (such as a flower, crayon, pencil etc.). This allowed me to see which students were able to measure properly and who needed further one on one instruction.

As a quick check in written assessment, I gave the students the following assessment. The assessment was taken individually by students with no teacher help. I simply wanted to see what the students had learned about measuring. 

(This student added an extra box when measuring the first two pictures but correctly measured the last two pictures (interesting!) 

(This student gave the correct measurement for three of the questions but did not color the cubes in correctly to justify their answers.)

A Fantastic Friday!

Parents surprise their students at school for lunch dates, to help in the classroom, or be a mystery reader. But it is less common for a teacher to get this kind of surprise! On Friday, my parents to the classroom for a surprise visit!! I couldn't have been more excited or surprised. They had perfect timing, we were just about to start an art lesson (the painting lines lesson from this post Fun with Lines). Having the extra set of hands was extremely helpful but also fun for my mom and dad to get to interact with the kids!

My parents had only ever seen the outside of the school (but that's not nearly as exciting as the inside!) So, after the students went to lunch, we went on a tour of the school. Both of them quickly understood why I love my student teaching experience so much.

If their surprise visit wasn't enough of a gift, they gave the classroom/class a present - The Dr. Seuss set of Kohl's Cares books and stuffed friends!

Thank you mom and dad!!

This amazing mentor teacher of mine helped plan the whole thing! Thanks Erica :)

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Monday was spent celebrating Dr Seuss’ birthday! We made green eggs and ham, Oobleck, read Dr Seuss stories, and did fun activities. 

Reading Green Eggs and Ham to the students before we made and tried green eggs 

This card was sent home with students last Friday. The hope was for every student to bring it back with an item on Monday. A few of the students participated and the class enjoyed guessing what was in their bag.

I taught a lesson on making mental images that accompanied the book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I read a short excerpt from from the book and asked students to close their eyes and make a picture in their head of what I said. Then, they went to a table and illustrated their mental image. Most of the students grasped the concept while only a few drew pictures that were unrelated to the excerpt I had read. This is what I read for the students to create their mental image from:

“My hat is old. 

My Teeth are gold.

I have a bird I like to hold. 

My shoe is off. 

My foot is cold.”

I absolutely love how cute these hats turned out! We had thing one to thing twenty two as each student had a different number. Students wore their hat for most of the day!   

People, Places, Things, and Animals

Last week’s reading lessons were focused on nouns and adjectives. The goal was to introduce students to nouns then teach how adjectives can be used in writing. Since the word and concept of an adjective is more complex than the kindergarteners are ready for. So, for this week, I wanted the students to learn the art of using describing words. 

Students made an “I am” poster as the introduction activity for learning about adjectives. Prior to this lesson, I took a picture of each student posing however they wanted. I printed these, cut them out, and glued them onto a piece of construction paper. For the activity, each student was asked to think of six adjectives that described them. These were written on the construction paper around their picture. “I am.. ” went at the top of the page. When reading the adjectives on their poster, students would say “I am smart” or whichever adjectives they chose. This helped the students understand that they were using adjectives to describe themselves. I allowed the students to use phonetic spellings as long as they did their best to stretch out each word.

On Wednesday, the class was divided into small groups. They worked together to sort pictures of objects into noun types(person, place, animal, thing). Originally, my plan was for the students to do this activity individually on their own iPad. But, technology had a different plan! Only five of the iPads decided to load the document. In the end, this worked out in my favor! The students were forced to figure out how to share the iPad, take turns sorting the pictures, and work as a team to sort each noun. 

Thursday’s activity and lesson tied together nouns, adjectives, and writing. I created an activity sheet that had a picture of a noun in the middle with five boxes surrounding it. In each box, the students needed to write a describing word/adjective for the picture. The nouns being described included a tiger, sun, airplane, and monster. 

During Daily 5 on Thursday, I worked with a small group of students on completing sentences by filing in nouns and adjectives. The students were encouraged to use any noun or adjective they could think of. Words did not have to spelled correctly as long as students did their best to stretch out each word. Several of the sentences turned out to be pretty creative!

It is interesting to see how some of the students "hear" letter sounds. This student wrote kite in the first box and hot in the second. I watched her stretch out each sound and this is how she interpreted the word to sound phonetically.  

The third sentence this student wrote was interesting: "My food is kold"

Reading for this week is all things Dr Seuss in honor of his birthday! I hope to have fun activities and lessons to blog about (so stay tuned :) !