Hurray for WVSTA!

Well, this weekend I attend my first teacher conference. I feel so grown up! I attended the conference with Nichole, Ashlee, and an under-the-weather Dr. Rye ( He kept calling me Angie!!) On Friday, we woke up and began attending presentations. The first presentation that we attended was actually hosted by a group of participants! The focus of their presentation was on using live crickets to measuring jump distances. Of course, I thought that was awesome because I like bugs and I love hands-on learning!!! Their lesson was completed with second grade students, but I clearly saw how I could change the lesson to be appropriate for my kinder kids. So guess what..... there is going to be a cricket invasion next week at North Elementary!!!!!! The other two presentations were about scientific writing and how to host a Science night at your school. The Science night presentation was very helpful and we came up with some awesome ideas. Be prepared for the most amazing Math and Science night that North has ever seen!!

Look at Fratoni go! 

My gorgeous presentation materials

Saturday was the moment that we had all been waiting for....presentation day!

Ashlee ready to share her garden knowledge!

We presented at 8:30 in the morning so I assumed that zero people would attend, but surprisingly I had six different people listen to me! I thought that I would feel super nervous, but actually I felt excited to share what I had done with my students. This lady from NASA seemed particularly interested in my students' journals and told me that she would give me seeds that had been in SPACE! Wowza! These seeds grow completely different than seeds that stayed on Earth. Can you say kindergarten experiment for contract hours??? 

All in all, it was a fun and educational time and gets me even more excited to present in Denver this Spring!

Do a little spider dance!

Well due to my illness, I have not blogged in a few weeks! Missing four days of Kindergarten felt like an eternity and I surprisingly realized that I would MUCH rather spend my days teaching than laying in my bed. As I get further into my action research, I am feeling so happy about! Not only is it fun, but I can see how much my students are engaged in the stories. The most interesting part about this study is watching my students act out the stories that we read. Using the simplest of props ( from a construction paper crown to a few sparkly stickers, the students bring the stories to life. My kids literally look like their heads are going to explode as they raise their hands SO high to be chosen as an actor. To make the job even sweeter, I always ask my actors to stand and bow as the audience claps. This week we worked with the story      " Where the Wild Things Are" and it has been one of my favorites so far. To add a little twist to my lesson, I played the animated version of the book on the SMART board following the story read aloud and student plays. When asked if the students preferred watching the plays or the video, all of my students said they enjoyed watching the student plays more. I found that to be such a special comment for children who are constantly watching TV, movies, and video games.

This week we learned about spiders to wrap up the month of October! The students seemed absolutely enthralled with the fact that girl spiders are bigger than boy spiders. The fact that really excited them was the fact that girl spiders eat boy spiders if they are hungry and boy spiders do a little dance and offer the female a treat when he wants to make friends with her ( well technically mate, but I don't want to get into that!!!)


After missing almost a week, I am so ready to be back!

In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue....but my kids think he is Johnny Appleseed

Even though this was a four day week it seemed extremely long. I feel like many of my students made strides these past few weeks, while others continue on the same path of blurting and turning off their ears to directions. My students just act as though they have no "off switch" for their voices. Somehow I place some partial blame on chocolate milk. I feel like yellow lights will start to come out more and more as students fail to close their mouths and listen to directions.

This week I started my action research and I have been very excited to implement it into my classroom. So far my students have reacted so positively to the read aloud adjustments that went along with my study. The first book that we focused on was "Caps for Sale"! Because this is a very vintage story, I worried that the students would not have as much interest but apparently this story delights children of any decade! One major aspect of my read aloud strategy is the implementation of story dramatizations and boy did my kiddies adore this! You have no idea how proud it made me feel to hear them giggling, raising their hands so high to be picked, and acting out the story with such enthusiasm. Some of my students even pouted because they were not picked and even though this is "unacceptable" behavior it showed me that they were very eager to take part in this lesson. I hope that the rest of my study continues in such a positive light!!

This week we celebrated Columbus Day with a variety of stories and activities dedicated to Columbus sailing the ocean blue. I chose to do a handprint activity that I had found on Pinterest. Truthfully, Pinterest is an amazing resource for teachers!! My first week of full time teaching felt a bit stressful, but also made me feel right where I am supposed to be. Teaching early childhood students is my passion and I am so excited to have this opportunity to work with these VERY diverse students everyday. Even though sometimes I feel as though I need a shot of adrenaline to match their level of energy.......

We love to write! 

A bunch of PUMPKIN heads :)

After reflecting on this week, I have to say that the lessons that I created were quite successful. Yay me! This week I focused on concepts of print, the sections of a book, patterning, and sequencing. Seems like a lot for my kiddies to learn in one week, but they  did  a very good job. From what I can remember from kindergarten, it seems like children these days are expected to learn so much! But on another note, I recorded myself teaching circle this week and when I watched it back, I felt like I was kind of a scary teacher. I always felt like in the past that I struggled with discipline and had no clue how to attempt classroom management, but this stern voiced Allie was on the screen. Am I too firm with these kiddies? I just feel like for them to understand the behavior that you want from them you need to be clear, bold, and show that you MEAN it with your body language and voice.
Some of my favorite lessons from this week were a fiction/non-fiction discussion, learning to "read", and pumpkin seed counting. When I started to teach my fiction and non-fiction lesson, I noticed that I was not as clear as I could be with the confusing concepts. I chose to start using key words "fake for fiction" and "not fake for non-fiction". That helped me teach and the kids understand the concepts!

Fiction and Non-fiction discussion materials



This week I also taught my students to "read" in fifteen minutes! Teacher of the decade goes to Allie Angotti.........well, not quite. Only one student in my class can actually read words, but I realized with excitement, visuals and prompting my students can read random letters, animals, and colors using correct reading strategies. I loved seeing the joy on my students faces when I gave them praise and applause for reading all on their own. It made me so happy that they were all clamoring to read again!
On Friday, we finally cut open the pumpkin that has been taunting the students all week! Working in small groups, the students estimated the total number of seeds and then each counted the a small group of seeds. The total number was over 300!!!!

  

It's Apple Season in Kinderland!

This week we celebrated the start of Fall with Johnny Appleseed's birthday and an apple theme! One of my lessons for this week was creating apple prints with the students and also incorporating sentence writing. It was definitely a trial and error process! This activity showed me that prior to a messy lesson you should practice at home so you are confident when you create with the kiddies. My students were given the task of choosing between the colors red, yellow, or green and they then had to write the sentence " NAME likes COLOR apples in Fall." This one of the students' first experience with writing on a line and A LOT of erasing occurred at my station. But that is OK!! Though some students eventually wrote their sentence after basically erasing a hole in their paper.....others needed a little extra help. For those students, I wrote out the sentence in highlight and they had to trace the pre-written words. I was pretty impressed with my on-the-spot differentiation idea!

After a month of allowing the students to sit where they please at circle time......that time has come to a beautiful end. Some students just cannot sit next to each other because of incessant chatting, touching, or fighting. Asking my students to sit still for 30 minutes is so challenging for them! I am hoping that my assigned seats will delete some fidgets and chatting issues.

As my time for full time teaching and starting my research project comes close, I am getting excited! I will definitely need to start pre-planning my activities so I am not completely overwhelmed in the next few weeks. Here's to a happy new week and the start of October!!

Just another week in crazy kindergarten....

Well I survived another week with these hyper kiddos, I'm pretty sure that chocolate milk should be served at a minimum in the public school system. This week it seems like we are starting to realize that our students struggle to listen, follow directions, or zip their lips. It is getting quite frustrating because it seems like it takes so long to do anything! From lining up to packing up backpacks, conversations constantly occur and the students fail to follow simple directions that we have been explaining for three weeks. What is the problem?????? To start, we moved a few students to different tables and this seemed to solve a few chatting issues. Tattling and the "blurts" are getting out of control....ugh. When a child comes up to you and says, " I have something REALLY important to tell you!", you usually assume that someone is bleeding in the hallway or a child has just lost a limb. But, alas, it is 99.9% a tattle. We had a conversation about tattles, but I think I need to move on to the next level.

Blurting is also an issue with my kinders..... they always seem to bubbling up with thoughts that just rush out of their mouths. Distracting, distracting, distracting. Once one student bursts the blurt bubble, then the rest of the children freely release their blurts. NO MORE!  I have developed a blurt chart which will hopefully erase the blurt issue. Each child's name is on a chart and if they blurt three or more times before recess, they must stand on the wall for 3 minutes. This will be my first week of trying this out, so I am sure it will be a learning experience for both the students and me. Some of my frequent blurters are typically all green light students, so I can assume that some tears will be shed.

First tooth lost at school! 

My last few weeks

Well apparently I have forgotten to blog for the last few weeks so I will just write one giant blog to make up for it.... :) Kindergarten is basically everything that I expected it to be and I love it, even though it really is so much work. After the first few weeks of school, I felt like going to sleep at about 8:30 every night and I felt quite disorganized and overwhelmed. I feel like I slowly getting into my stride because I know the routines, writing out lesson plans is becoming more simple and like second nature, and the children are becoming more independent as the weeks roll on.
The concepts that I have been focusing on are:
- the alphabet and letter sounds
-numbers,counting, and how to write numbers
- colors and how to mix colors to create new ones
- rhyming words and how to produce rhymes
- student writing their names in different forms ( using environmental print, cut up pieces of paper, etc)

Maddy's name mosaic 

I feel that so far my lessons have gone pretty darn well and the fact that we use station rotations really helps with tweaking my lessons throughout the morning. I usually always start with the RED group of students and they are excellent listeners and a higher group of children, so I know if something does not work for them that I definitely need to adjust the material for the other children. I still do find it challenging to provide the extra one-on-one attention for the ELL children throughout my lessons because the other students need my assistance as well. I think I need to grow a few more pairs of arms to meet this balancing challenge. From what I expected, the students seem to absolutely love any activity that involves moving around the room, competition games, or using crafting materials. Who know that musical chairs and paint would delight the students so much!!

Becoming color mixing scientists!

Another interesting thing that I am noticing is that your attitude as a teacher has a major affect on the students' interest and enthusiasm for the lesson. I usually try to use silly voices, different inflections, and excitement when explaining the lessons and I can definitely see that if I am excited about the lessons then the students become very pumped up! Acting like a crazy clown when you are reading a story sky rockets their engagement. Lucky for me that acting like a crazy clown comes naturally for me :) 

Carlos' perfectly painted chameleon from " A Color of his Own"


For my action research, I have decided to focus on the effects of interactive read alouds on students' acquisition and comprehension of vocabulary words. Starting in October, I will be choosing approximately four "sophisticated" story books which will be used in my study. I am curious to see how many extra words that students will learn if they are more actively involved in the read aloud process. I am also hoping that this action research project will not eat me alive like the one that I struggled through last year in fourth grade.