Week 8: New placement's going great!

Monday, February 25

Today started the official beginning-of-the-end for my journey of student teaching! Going to Beecher Elementary today, I had mixed emotions. I was extremely excited to start because I was able to visit the classroom three times last semester, and have had tons of email correspondence with my cooperating teacher, Christy. At the same time, it definitely felt odd to leave my house and head in the opposite direction of CPCS. I’ll always remember my time at Crown Point Christian with smiles on my face, but I did head to Beecher with a smile too, so that was a good feeling.

Upon arriving, I talked to the principal for a bit and then headed to my classroom. I have two kindergarten classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon; each lasts for three hours. I quickly realized how three hours is not nearly enough to get everything done! The curriculum may not be extremely strenuous in kindergarten, but there are definitely are lot of things that need to be finished at the end of the day, and I am greatly aware of the time crunch that the teachers face. With recess, snack time and all the specials such as gym, music and library, those three hours quickly diminish into under two hours—barely enough time for a reading, science, math curriculums as well as time for the fun, exciting kindergarten-y projects.

Tuesday, February 26

Just like yesterday, today flew by. Kindergarten is always busy, but Christy told me this week is even more so than normal. Friday is Ocean Day where the students have special adults who can come in for an hour and do ocean-related activities. Before Friday comes though, there’s a lot of preparation that needs to take place. There are so many art projects that need to get done with the kids and to still squeeze in all the actual lessons is tough. I’ve noticed that both Christy and Elaine share a similar mindset in that, you do what you’ve got to do, and anything else is a bonus! Sometimes it’s just too hard to get everything done that you need to prioritize and just do what you can. Another similarity I’ve seen between my two cooperating teachers is their ability to over-plan! Both have admitted that they are way ambitious and always think more can get done. As we’ve talked about at Trinity, it’s always better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, so I am thankful for their example of me of how to be prepared yet still flexible.

Wednesday, February 27

Because I’m starting at a new school, it’s been interesting figuring out more information about the kids. It’s sort of strange because I do find myself comparing these students to my students at CPCS. Here are a quick facts about my students:

Morning class (8:30-11:30)—23 kids; one student has a one-on-one aide primarily because she has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Jenny primarily has this in her knees and ankles, but they are pretty sure she also has it in her jaw and hands/wrists. Part of why they think it’s in her jaw is because Jenny is unable to pronounce certain sounds, so it is hard for her to vocalize and communicate with students and teachers. The aide also helps a lot with another child (Thomas) because he is unofficially diagnosed with Autism. The teaching team is working through the process right now to figure out what to do with both of these two students for next year. Intellectually, they are great and right on track for 1^st grade, but socially, it will be extremely hard for them.

Afternoon class (12:30-3:30)—20 kids; one student is extremely bright. Ethan reads at a 4^th/5^th grade reading level, and is quite frankly brilliant. Today he matched all the states with their capitals and after I graded them (using a map of course!) he had gotten them all correct. He is one smart kindergartener!  Socially though, Ethan is extremely immature. He’s already on the young side for being in kindergarten, and though his older sister skipped first grade, it is unlikely that he will because he would be so off socially. Ethan also is much smaller and shorter than the other kids in class so skipping a grade would make him stand out even more. We also have an aide in the afternoon class but she is not a one-on-one; she helps with the whole class.

Thursday, February 28

Today was mostly spent doing a lot of final minute preparations for tomorrow’s Ocean Day. This past week we’ve had quite a few absences in both the morning and afternoon classes on various days, but luckily today we had everyone present so we were able to get the kids caught up. In order to do this though, I worked with them in the back of the room while the other students continued on their normal work. It’s a vicious cycle because then the student that I’m working with misses on their calendar time or their letterbook (the reading curriculum) or another project that they then need to rush through in order to finish on time and get back on track. I’ve seen this crazy cycle in other classrooms, but I feel like it’s even harder in kindergarten—especially when it’s a half-day schedule.

Christy (my cooperating teacher) has said how much she cannot stand doing half-day. If it were up to her, she would completely change to full-day. There’s just too much that needs to get done, and because you do not want to get rid of the special fun, kindergarten activities, you lose a lot of learning time. If it were full-day, the morning could consist of the majority of the actual learning lessons while the afternoons were the specials and the fun projects. But the world is not a perfect place, so half-day kindergarten still exists!

Friday, March 1

Wow, oh, wow. Having family members come into the kindergarten classrooms is a lot of fun, but an incredibly stressful, chaotic time! In our morning class with 23 kids, we had 29 adults come in. Every student had a special adult come, which is awesome, but it definitely made for a cramped classroom. In our afternoon class, we had 14 special adults come in, so the principal, librarian, some office secretaries, and other random people from the school came in so that each student had a special person to go through the stations with. It was really neat that the school put forth the extra effort so each kid felt special.

This was the schedule of the morning: come to school at 8:30 and did calendar and some of their letterbook, at 9:30 they went to music class, and then parents came from 10-11, and were then free to take their students home with them, so they got to leave school a half hour early. The schedule was the same for the afternoon class, so the great part was that Christy and I got to set up final details while the kids were gone at music class.

When the parents arrived, Christy gave a welcome to the parents in which she introduced me, and then gave the directions for how the next hour would go. There were four tables that they would rotate between so that they were at each spot for approximately 15 minutes. Christy had ocean books lying on the carpet and had an ocean video playing (without the sound on) so that if anyone finished any activity early, they did have something else to do. Though it all went smoothly, it was definitely a crazy, exhausting day. I’ll be honest—when the morning class was over, I was not really looking forward to going through the same thing in an hour! It takes a lot of energy to have special days like Ocean Day. They are an absolute blast and definitely something that the kids will remember, but it can drain the energy right out. Overall though, it was a very fun day, and it was neat to meet so many of the parents so early in my placement!

Classroom Confidential

A great strategy that I could use in my kindergarten placement is Schmidt’s Skinny to Steroids. In this activity, you write a simple sentence on the board, and then have the students come up with adjectives and adverbs that would help make the sentence more detailed. I actually did an activity similar to this with my first graders at CPCS and they absolutely loved it. Some of the sentences they created were silly but the amount of detail they had was so strong that their sentences turned out great.

Another technique that Schmidt mentions he calls There’s a Jewel. Using different type of praise words for my students helps improve their vocabulary, which will ultimately improve their writing. Rather than simply saying “Good sentence,” I can say “Outstanding sentence”. Simple changes such as incorporating words like outstanding, superb, exceptional, marvelous, brilliant, extraordinary and dazzling show students that there are a million synonyms out there; using such words makes our writing much more thrilling. Schmidt definitely points out a lot of great writing strategies, but what I really like about these two is their versatility. They can be used in my kindergarten room, as well as a 5^th grade room, and even an 8^th grade room.