Yesterday we got our practicum placements! I am beyond excited. It’s no secret that in my eyes, the smaller the student, the better, so when I found out that I’ve been placed in a Kindergarten classroom, well, I could not be happier!! I will be teaching in a Kindergarten class at an Elementary School in Prince George. I’ve never been to this school, which makes it even more exciting! Upon receiving this news I immediately dove in: Today’s blog post will be a smattering of thoughts and strategies that I look forward to molding and fine tuning along with my coaching teacher in the weeks to come – and hopefully in the future get to implement in my own classroom.
First: The basics. Reading, Riting, Rithmatic. Or language, literacy, and numeracy. To each their own. My first ideas towards supporting language, literacy and numeracy learning in my dream future classroom – a Kindergarten classroom.
I will use a variety of strategies, in attempt to reach all learners, to support language and literacy development in my classroom. I believe language is fundamental in their early years, so I will structure my classroom to have many inquiry-based learning spaces that foster language development. This could include an interactive play centre (house, grocery store, kitchen, outdoor market), read aloud corner, loose parts, and drama station. I will provide a variety of interactive games to help students identify letters of the alphabet, we will engage in songs, poems, and nursery rhymes, and I will model vocabulary. I will also do Sharing Circle daily where each child has the opportunity for a formal sharing time once a week and answers questions from their peers. Talking Stick Time will be once a day and during this time each child gets an uninterrupted time to tell the class about a topic of their choice while the others actively listen.
I will support numeracy development through providing a large variety of early learning board games that can be played in small groups or class-wide. Dice games and card games are also excellent tools for fostering numeracy, and can be played individually, in partnerships, or groups. We will do Five Frame activities, sorting, and patterning through activities such as individual table work, and small group numeracy learning centres that are teacher guided.
I can assess children’s learning through inquiry through read a-louds, Sharing, one-to-one interactions, and open ended inquiry questions such as, Can you show me…?, I wonder what would happen if…?, Tell me how you….?. I find a very accurate assessment tool is to join in with the inquiry activities the children are engaged with and play along. For example, if I am there building the block stairs with a child, or playing a card game, I can directly hear and see their thinking and strategies.
I will be assessing ongoing for motivation, comprehension, and fluency in all areas, and varying my numeracy and literacy program accordingly.
It is important to assess all the skills of reading at a young age even at the Kindergarten level to know where our students are at in the areas of motivation, comprehension, and fluency. It is effective to assess these skills separately, as students may be stronger in certain areas. It is unlikely at this early level, that they will be strong in all these skills. For example, in literacy, the strong readers at first glance are the ones who have good fluency, but upon assessment – in my past practicum experience, I often found that comprehension is low. Some students who had not yet mastered fluency could demonstrate a high comprehension level when read aloud to and/or asked questions.
In the classroom, motivation is assessed through constant observation. This is noted thorough the students attraction and interest towards reading through methods such as read-alouds, independent reading times, shared reading, and guided reading. Comprehension can be assessed daily through verbal check-ins (questioning, discussion times, one-to-one teacher/student conference, and teacher guided peer discussions). Fluency can be assessed informally on a daily basis through sharing home reading, weekly poems, the student reading to an adult every day, sight words, nursery rhymes, sing-alongs and other daily literacy activities.
Lastly, I have been thinking about how to develop my questioning skills. In the past, my strategy has been to ask a question, and upon the students response I would often say, “Can you tell me more?” “What do you mean by that?” or I would simply stay quiet for an extra beat in attempt to prompt more information from the child. Though I stand by this strategy, I know I need to work on my questions, because I truly do want to lead an inquiry-based classroom in my future, and I think that questioning is the first step! Therefore, I have made a chart of questions I can refer back to and practice with my practicum class this practicum. This was an easy exercise because once I put my chart into point form, the ideas and questions just started flowing. Though it was so basic, I’d honestly recommend this exercise to others because it sparked my own questioning and inquiry as well!
