Age Shift

Ok, so currently I am working as a one year old teacher at a preschool in down town Atlanta. It is quite a shift from Working in Kindergarten and Pre-K in my internships but I know that if stay focused I can make this transition smooth. This week I wrote my first lesson plan for the classroom and began to set the classroom up to create the environment to support this plan. I will post what happens, good bad, things that worked/didnt work later this week! :-)

"Teachers have the summer off"

Whenever I tell people that I am going to be a teacher, I often here the response, "at least you get summers off." I would like to correct this statement and say that being a teacher is a 24-7-365 job.

This is not a complaint, just a correction.

You might ask, how is that possible? Well the job of a teacher isn't just teaching and guiding the students in the classroom. There is a lot more to this job, that people seem to not know about.

Being a teacher is taking any and every moment and making it a "teachable moment," if it be for the child or the teacher. I often times find myself jotting down ideas or interesting facts about things I learn throughout my day, in effort to gain as much knowledge as possible. This brings me to my argument about how every day of the year is a working day for a teacher. Im not saying this as a negative statement, but more as an informative statement.

Prime example. Im sitting at home and I hear my 2 1/2 year old brother say, "Mom! time to wash dishes!" I hop up from the couch and creep into the kitchen (must not let my brother know I am watching or else he will stop). My brother pulls the stool to the kitchen sink and says, "I wash mom's dishes. Mom, your coffee cup! I need some". My mom offers my brother some bubbles, and then allows my brother to "wash the dishes. After watching my brother from around the corner for about 5 minutes I realized how much my brother was learning.

First, I want to recognize the situation that my brother was learning in was created and allowed by my mom. Allowing children to explore and experience daily activities such as washing the dishes, picking out their clothes, or helping prepare food expose them to a wide range of learning opportunities.

Not only was my brother able to practice and show independence and accomplishment, but he spit out sentences full of language relating to washing the dishes that might not occur in other situations.
"Mom, I see the bubbles in your coffee cup"
"I can do this. I wash this right here. This water is cold"
"I did it. Its clean!"

Another learning opportunity that I observed was the ability to problem solve. When my brother first reached for the sink handle he couldn't reach. He got off of the stool and pushed his stool closer to the sink. When the water was getting full in the sink my brother shouted, "too full. turn it off!"

This experience helped me to realize that any and every situation is a teachable moment. My mom guided and allowed my brother to experience washing the dishes, which was fun to him, but in actuality a learning opportunity. I apply this to teaching because if I am able to create experiences that help teach students in a natural and fun way, they will enjoy learning much more!

So even at home on an "off day" I am learning how to appropriately guide and teach young children... thanks mom!

Observing Rocks

I never thought that teaching the children about rocks would promote so much student directed discovery. For one of our science activities this week, the children observed a variety of rocks by different classifications (size, color, luster, smell, touch). The children rotated to six stations to observe and record what they observed in the different rocks. I saw the children excited, motivated and curious about the wide variety of differences among the rocks they were observing.

Fun Friday Songs

At the end of the day on Friday's we started to incorporate "fun movement" songs to give the children a designated time to wind down. The kids love dancing and singing along together, and really enjoy when the teachers dance too! Here is us singing and dancing to Ice cream and Cake.

Our Classroom Giving Tree

Our classroom Giving tree on display in the Kindergarten hallway!

Pet Rocks

Today we started making our pet rocks. As a fun and creative way to introduce rocks, the children painted their rocks that they collected over the weekend. Tomorrow we will add details (googly eyes, hair, and the children will have the opportunity to create a habitat for their rock. The children will also answer observational and descriptive questions about their pet rock.

Study of Rocks!

This week we are learning about Rocks! I am excited because I was able to gain access to some of the other teacher's rocks and relating materials in the school. On Friday, we read Everyone Needs a Rock, by Byrd Baylor to give the children fun and creative ideas of how and where they can find the "perfect" rock. The fictional and humorous story is a great way to introduce rocks to kindergartners because the story ends with the intention and hope that the audience will go on a search for their own rock. In response to this ending, the children were asked to go on a rock search to find their own "unique and special" rock.

As a suggestion from a retiring first grade teacher, introducing new topics to young children with a fun and interesting book gets the children thinking and predicting ideas about the topic. Further, from a previous course on teaching literacy to young children, I remember my professor stressing how important and effective reading responses can be across all instructional periods of the day. Learning and practicing how to incorporate literature into science, social studies and math is an authentic way for incorporating literacy into a variety of subjects. Exposing children to literacy in areas besides just language arts seems to be a reoccurring value that I have observed in many classrooms.

Reflection on The Giving Tree activity

The Giving Tree activity went great! I feel like the children were really engaged with this activity which proves their interest and ability to understand the topic. I heard relevant table conversations and observed several children relating the Giving Tree story to their own lives. One child stated " I climb trees!" and further wrote "David climbs trees" on his leaf. This let me know that he was able to extend the topic (how plants help people and how people help plants) to his own life. The parapro in our classroom guided the child by explaining that "yes, you climb trees, so trees give people limbs to climb on". This was an awesome connection for this student!

The Giving Tree

Today we read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I love this book! As an reading extension on our plant unit we are going to create our own classroom Giving Tree. The purpose of this activity is for the children to learn about ways that plants help people and animals as well as ways that people help plants.

After our read aloud today we discussed various ways that we help plants as well as ways that plants help people and animals. The children made great connections from the boy and the tree in the story to their own life experiences.
Some ideas we came up with:
1) Ways that plants help people
-plants give us food
-trees give us wood for making houses and boats
-plants give us shade
-plants give us oxygen so we can live
-plants give animals food and materials to make habitats
-We can use tree branches to climb
-Trees give us wood to make play sets and tree houses

2)Ways that people help plants
-people give plants water so they can grow
-people plant seeds so more plants can grow
-people give plants rich soil

Tomorrow the class will write sentences on individual leaf cut-outs about the discussion above. After we write on our leaves we will add the leaves to our classroom Giving Tree (made out of butcher paper) and then put it on display in the hallway for other students to see!

Positive Atitude!

This is my first post! I am excited to share my teaching experiences and ideas with you. Currently I am student teaching in a Kindergarten classroom at Colham Ferry Elementary. This school is a rural public school in Oconee County. My experience as a student teacher has been filled with amazing and hard working experiences!

My favorite part about student teaching has been meeting and working with a team of early childhood professionals to learn and better become aware of how to teach and guide Kindergarteners. I have come to not only admire my fellow team members but also to consider as role models and life long friends.

Other areas that I have focused on during my student teaching include:
-Teaching and guiding 18 Kindergarten students in an inclusive/collaborative setting
-Planning and conducting lessons and activities with an emphasis on differentiated instruction
-Collaborating with Kindergarten team members to plan lessons, modify classroom setup, provide appropriate behavior management, and gain experience in communicating with families
-Embedding Individualized Education Plan (IEP) goals and objectives into daily lessons using Activity Based Intervention (ABI) Plans
-Utilizing Functional Behavior Analysis (FBA) to identify challenging behaviors in order to modify and implement interventions using Positive Behavior Support (PBS) Plans
Assessing student knowledge and comprehension using standards based education in correspondence with the Georgia Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (GKDIS)
-Collecting and graphing data on students entering the Response to Intervention (RTI) tiers