Somethings about the beginning of the year I hate:

I’ve barely got my kids settling into the routine of school, (we were on day 18 today) and they are really pushing us to get into small group differentiated instruction.  That’s fine, but the problem is, what are the rest of the kids are doing while you are doing differentiated instruction?  They aren’t set THAT well into the routines of school yet.  Many of my kids are still coping with the sheer joy of being around a bunch of other kids for the first time in their lives in what they view as a social setting.  And I agree, they really need that socialization.  But they don’t know how to control themselves and make good choices yet.  Many of them can’t stay on task doing  their seatwork when I am NOT doing small group instruction, when I start the small group instruction, their behavior and amount of time on task will not improve.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they would let us ease into centers, but they want to micro manage the center activities as well.  They have placed so many conditions on what the centers can or cannot be that it’s almost impossible to comply.   None of the old traditional centers are good enough, or academic enough anymore, no puzzles, no housekeeping, no blocks.  During the reading block of time, the centers had better be language based.  During math, the centers have to be math.  The math centers they have for kindergarten that come with our math series, are two kid centers, take longer to explain than they do to do, and all require manipulatives.  So if my intervention group is 5 or 6 kids, that means I have to have 12 or 13 centers set up for the rest of the class, with the manipulatives all counted out……..  And of course the math lady sees nothing wrong with doing her centers during language arts and the language arts specialist really doesn’t have a problem with you doing language arts centers during math, but they really have a problem if you do something else in THEIR time block.  And anymore, you hardly can fit the required number of minutes of ANY subject into the week.

I was looking at how many conferences I need to set up for kids I have concerns about.  Nine.  Nine out of 29 kids I have concerns about how they are going to do if they don’t have some serious help at home.  And of course most of them haven’t had any of that help yet, that’s why they can’t do anything.

Using a SmartBoard in the Primary Grades

I am really excited about having this.  Although they really didn’t think it all through very well.  I’m not sure where the money came from for these, but they bought about a dozen or so of them for our school.  They didn’t buy them to install on the wall, so they came on legs, no laptops to go with them, and  the project wasn’t a good fit for my room.  It would probably work in a smaller room, but in order to have the projection fit on the SmartBoard, I would have to cut the distance between the screen and to projector in half and that would put my projector right in the middle of my 30 kids.  My personal projector works at this distance just fine.  I had to get an extra 15 feet of USB cable to make it reach from the SmartBoard to the laptop.  I ran the wires along the top of the bulletin board and the white board on the wall to the side there.

I needed to find a way to  really have the projector rock solid stable.  Getting jiggled just a little can unsync the projector from the board.  So I moved these two filing cabinets out into the room and put a table between the cabinets and the wall.  That way the wires can come out to the projector and laptop from the wall without being in a traffic area.

With my sound system (and Ipod dock) attached to the laptop, and the laptop connected to the internet on the wall to the left, I can play DVDs, access the internet, and do other Smartboard activities all from one setup.  Today was our first day (it took a couple of hours on Labor Day to get everything set up).  We were doing the letter Mm in our Trophies Reading Series, so I used the FrogStreet Press DVD to introduce the letter Mm.  The DVD also demonstrates how to write the letters too.  I then pulled up a print program that I use to print practice writing for them that can be printed out.  We then practiced writing the letters right on the SmartBoard.  We also did the same thing in the afternoon with the numbers 4 and 5.  I’m the only kindergarten teacher that they gave a SmartBoard to, and I think I got it because I used to be a Tech Specialist and they figured I’d actually use it.  I am really excited about the possibilities.  There’s still a couple of glitches to iron out.  For example, I can access the teacher resources on the Smart website from home on my laptop, but the school firewall seems to block access when connected at school.  Something to have my resident tech work on I guess, I no longer have those “rights” now that I’m a classroom teacher.

I spent a chunk of my Saturday at school…. :(

But I did get a bunch done.  I got  the name tags done, the lunch cards done (had to glue the barcodes onto some card stock then laminate them- laminating consisting of using clear packing tape and putting two layers on each card), all the names on the cubbies, names on the glue sticks, the crayon boxes and the tables, and most of the room cleaned up so there isn’t stuff laying around.  Other than lesson plans, I think we’re ready.  Humm, lesson plans, I guess I should do something about them………

Next Year’s Calendar

So this is our year round “track” calendar.  At any given time, there is usually one track out.  The odd day here and there might have two tracks out, if that occurs, it’s usually right when tracks are switching over with one going out and one coming in.  I will be on the Track 5 rotation next year, coming from the Track 1 position, so I am going from having my track break the longest time ago, to on the new track, having it the farthest into the year, so there will be a LONG haul between any “actual” breaks,  I’m not counting the one mentioned in my last post, because everyone gets it.  And it is SHORT.

End of this year, beginning of next…..

My kids have 12 days of school left in kindergarten.  They are ready for first grade.  I’m in awe of how much they have grown in 168 days of school.  All but about three are reading.  Most of them very well.  I spent last week at the “I Teach K” National Kindergarten Conference and had a great time, lots of great ideas for starting off the new year.  THAT’s coming too soon.  Over the last couple of days, my kids have been reporting that they have received their class assignments for next year.  Since most of our kinder classes are at around 25 kids, and all the first grades are mandated at 16 to 1, they will not all be together next year.  The school is shifting some of them onto different  year-round schedules so it sounds like there will only be three or four of them in each class together, but they know most of the other kindergarten kids so it should be OK.

The hard part is going to be the SHORT time between the end of this year and the beginning of the next.  Seven non-contractual days (counting one weekend) between when we are done with this year and when we have to report back (two non-student days on the end of this year and three on the front of next year).  Two weeks without kids.  That’s almost too short of a time to make the mental adjustment from the kids at the end of kindergarten and the babies coming in.  But it’s not as if I get a choice whether to adjust or not…….

We were going to take a short trip, but my wife said tonight that mentally it’s starting to pile up on her and she doesn ‘t think she wants too now.  I’m afraid I’m going to agree.  I’ve got so much to do to wrap this year up yet, I can’t even begin to think about next year, but I find myself doing it.  I asked in the front office about supplies for next year, and they won’t fill the requests yet…….  Bummer.

Oh yeah, and forget about class lists, naturally the incoming kindergarten kids know who THEIR teachers are going to be,  why does it always have to be such a surprise for the teachers?  Although one of the cute little girls next door told me yesterday that I was going to be her sister’s kindergarten teacher next year….

Break is almost over…..

I’ve been out of school for so long that I can’t even remember what we were teaching/learning when we went on break.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to find things in my room either.  Classes start back for our rotation next Thursday.  I will probably spend some of tomorrow (Friday) and most of the first part of next week at school getting ready to start back up.

I’m really bummed reading all the other teacher blogs I follow.  Everyone is talking about winding down the school year and I still have a third of my year to go.

If you teach kindergarten, is anyone going to the national, “I Teach K” conference in Las Vegas this year?  It looks like Title One is going to let us go this year.  It would be fun to connect, if anyone is going to be there.

Three days back and counting……

Let’s see,  on Monday, one of the first things I heard after almost 5 weeks out, “Mr B.! You got new shoes!”  They don’t remember what an Aa or a Bb is or how they sound, but they DO remember what I wear.  My wife says that’s because they are down there by the shoes………

The next thing they asked was, “What’s that thing on your arm?”  I said that it was for when I go to the gym (without getting too specific,  it’s a BodyBugg, that monitors my caloric burn and activity).  They were divided between the ones that said, “My mom (or dad) does that.” and the ones that said, “What’s a gym?”  I said, “A gym is PE for grownups.”

Now, so far this week, Reading First in my room, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (she ended up coming into my room EVERY DAY this week, it’s like, WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?  You may not really like the WAY I do things, but I have the highest scores in the school in kindergarten….so what ever I do, must work……..).  Staff meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, and two of my three 50 minute preparation times taken for meetings.    During one of the meetings during my preparation time, we went over trimester district testing results and the Reading First lady was there.  Later she was giving me a little grief over how I do some things.  I pointed out that of the 5 kindergarten classes at our school my class scored the highest on that skill…….   Oh yeah, and mClass math assessments on all kids this week and dibels progress monitoring on all kids this week.   Please, just let me TEACH…………

Monday and Tuesday next week I have a sub both days so that I can go to two different trainings.  One of them is supposed to be a two day training (I’ve already done a previous two days of it) and the other one is a one day training that they happened to schedule on Tuesday —AT THE SAME TIME.  Of course they BOTH think they are the most important one for me to go to.      Again, just let me teach…….

Reading First, Again……..

Since I got used to having people in my room while I’m teaching ALL of the time (well, that’s what it feels like anyway…)  I’ve actually started to enjoy part of it.  The on-site Reading First person has been spending some time with me and we have been working on some of the strategies that involve more of the class than things like just calling on one kid at a time for a response.  We used Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures at my last school, but a lot of the stuff they were focusing on at the time was hard to bring down to  the kindergarten level.  Three that are working with my kids as they get used to them are: Choral response, Action Response (like thumbs up or thumbs down) and Partner response (think, pair, share).  In Partner response you can do it different ways to engage both learners, A tells B,  B tells A,  A and B tell each other, and the beauty is that you can then ask A to tell you what B said.  If they don’t know whose response you are going to ask for, they both have to be ready.  The idea is to get many more kids engaged rather than just the one you call on.  Something else I’m doing better is picking up the pace.  On the phonemic awareness and phonics parts of the lesson, if they don’t know it, I just tell them and move on.  For example today they were having a hard time identifying the rhymes in some text.  Rather than spend a lot of time trying to get someone to give me the correct response,  I deliberately emphasized the rhyming words, then if they didn’t get it  quickly, I just told them and moved on.  I’m also doing more chorale response activities, like having them repeat the two rhyming words several times.

This isn’t a big deal in the sense that I’m giving them the answers, because all of the phonemic awareness stuff and phonics stuff spirals in our reading program.  Sooner or later they will get it.  I really noticed this last year towards the end of the year when we got into consonant blends, digraphs, double vowels, and silent e words.  At first, they weren’t getting a lot of it, but the more they did it, the more of them started to get it.  But they had to work with the things for a certain amount of time before it clicked.

Anyway, I decided that I’m going to video myself a number of times so that I can see what it looks like.  Oh joy.

More Reading First

So, two days of being observed, and by being observed I mean as many as 6 extra adults in my room at the same time during the observing, and one day of “co-operative” teaching where their person comes in and co-teaches with me, modeling how they think things should be done and then, “helping” me teach my part of the co-teaching.  I’m just glad it’s over.  …………  I HOPE it’s over.  At least for the time being anyway.  I know it’s a full moon and all, but my kids are going nuts now.  Too many disruptions, and routine changes.

And while I have listened, nodded my head and smiled, on a number of levels I am also frustrated.  Over all though it has generally been valuable.  After some discussion, we have made some simple changes in classroom layout that will make things more affective, and we introduced some changes in some of the routines which frankly I welcome if they will change some of my kids disruptive behaviors.  They want me to use more effective ways to involve more of the children in the actual process.  Some of these are co-operative learning strategies.  The easiest one to implement with kinder kids is probably the “think, pair, share” model.  To work in kindergarten it needs structure.  We started out by assigning the partners at their tables before they moved to the carpet.  We assigned them partner names, in this case, partner A and Partner B.  That way we could get specific in telling them what to do.  “A, tell B what you are going to do after school.”  “B, raise your hands,”  etc, etc.   Another specific thing she modeled for me, something that I had gotten sloppy on, was using specific hand signals to illicit behaviors.  Such as one for think time, one for group response, etc.  If I can retrain the kids to move away from blurting out the answers and cheating the others of a chance to respond that would be great.  So all in all, I learned some things and will be making some changes to tighten things up a bit.

Was everything good?  Not in my book. Yesterday she made reference or alluded to the “fact”  that the 5 day cycle in Trophies was cyclical in that the same things or types of things or instruction tended to happen on the same days of the 5 day cycle in each weekly unit.  I hadn’t really picked up on that during the last three years of teaching Trophies.  I had heard it alluded to, but hadn’t really “seen” it.  I had dismissed my not seeing it as being due to the fact that we were on a 6 day teaching rotation at my last school to accommodate the art, music, science, library and PE specialists schedules, and also due to holidays and staff training days, we rarely actually taught day one on Monday and day five on Friday on any kind of consistent basis.  But since she brought it up, I took some time last night and looked at the schedule over multiple weeks.  I still don’t see it.  It might be the case in the upper grades, but I can’t find it in the kindergarten sequence.

Some of the other things they did, or showed me, or want me to do  are iffy.  For example, I went out and spent $35.00 on dry erase markers (the ones available at school were the high odor ones) so that she could have the kids use small white boards at their tables.   I hate using paint or markers in class, they are messy and the kids get into trouble with them.  It’s also a management issue.  Money is tight right now, and getting tighter in my school and district with millions being cut from the district budgets by the state. They can write with pencil or crayon on paper just fine.  Or better yet, I have these special tablets I purchased at the National Kindergarten Conference two years ago that are made up of iron powder between two layers of plastic that kids can write on with magnetic stylists.  She didn’t want to use them.

“Worksheet” is a bad word on general principle with them.  Regardless of how appropriate the selected worksheet might be, (in fact, presented as center activities, my worksheets are OK) but if I use the same worsheet whole group, it’s bad.  They appear to want the kids rotating through a variety of small group centers rather than doing the same work in a larger group.  If most of it’s the same work, why should it make a difference?  It’s not like the whole group work is all that my students do, they leave the seat work to do computers, small group instruction, and some other small center activities, it just the primary activity that they start they daily work from.

The specialist appear to want fidelity to the Reading program, but they pick and chose the parts they want to fidelity to, but are reluctant to allow me (or the other teachers for that matter) to do the same.  To show letter formation, I use a Frog Street Press DVD, I sometimes use different music selections than the ones that come with the program.  For my Morning Message, shared writing activity, they even changed out my paper tablet for crying out loud.  I’m not buying the ones they provided, the giant post it note variety.  The first time they don’t have the replacement tablet, I’m back to my old ones that cost about two thirds less.

Assessments

Last Wednesday, before I went to my trainings for two days, my aide did alphabet and number assessments on all my kids.  It took pretty much the whole day.  I’ve done DIBELS with them and that gives a pretty good indicator of where they are at.  But this tells me exactly what they know.  Well, barring the the inconsistencies of testing 5 year olds, but this is about as good as it gets.

I had a chance to look over the results the other day and they aren’t too bad.  Most of the kids actually know something…..  Most of the kids know at least half of their letter sounds and most of their letters.  The ones who don’t know much, for the most part aren’t a surprise although there were a couple of surprises.  Interesting how some kids come across as knowing more than they actually do.  Besides the letters and sounds, most of them know the six sight words that we have done in Trophies so far too.

One of the interesting things I thought was the aide’s perception that more of my kids knew more of the letters and sounds than the kids in the other classes.  I’m not in a competition, nor am I interested in out performing the other teachers, it’s just that I do wonder how, what I do, compares in it’s effectiveness with the rest of the world.  And I want to be doing a good job.  I want to know that what I do or think works actually does work.

Sure, we have an adopted reading program, but I think that I supplement it a lot.  I think I pick better worksheets for the seat work than the series does, and I think I sometimes push a little different focus or approach things a little different than the set packaged program.  A lot of my phonics comes from this program by Fountas and Pinnel and I think it works very well.