A Classroom Management Master
This week, I had the opportunity to observe a literacy block in Kindergarten. It was a blast! First of all, can I just say, the teacher was a master at classroom management!! The students knew their routines and procedures and happily followed them. The teacher would laugh, smile and joke with the littles as they learned, but when the bell rang or the teacher said, “Hands on top,” those children knew exactly what was expected of them. I would LOVE to spend the month of September in her room as she teaches and implements these routines with her students. I was there to learn about teaching literacy to Kindergartens, which I did, but I was also able to learn about the importance and value of classroom management. It was an absolute pleasure to be in her classroom.
Literacy Stations in Kindergarten
The teacher separated the students into 4 groups. From what I understand, the groupings were generated according to ability, but there wasn’t a significant difference from one group to another. Prior to beginning the stations, the teacher reviewed the expectations in a fun, humorous way, saying things like, “We’re going to be super noisy!” and the kids all responded, “Noooo!” Then she said, “I’m going to do mine the fastest!” and the students giggled and corrected her, “No! We’re going to do our BEST work!!!” It was cute watching the kids giggle and correct their silly teacher. The students were familiar with the stations, so she didn’t need to explain them, just sent them off, and started her timer.
STATION 1
At the first station, there was a pile of laminated activity sheets for students to choose from. Each activity sheet was focused on a different letter of the alphabet that the students had learned up to that point. Essentially, the activity sheet is created as a maze. You start at the capital letter at the top and work your way through the images that begin with that letter until you reach the lower case letter at the bottom of the sheet. Does that make sense? Maybe not. Take a look at the image, the student would place a little pebble on the capital T, then look at the images that touch that square, and ask themselves, “Which image starts with a letter T? A tiger or a banana?” The student would then say the word a couple of times focusing on the beginning sound of each word. Then the student place a pebble on the tiger and look at each image that touches the “tiger” square and ask, “Which image start with a T?” all over again. In this example, it went T > tiger > turtle > tomato > treasure > tooth > tree > tie > tent > t.
The students had a lot of fun completing the activity, but I found some of the images quite challenging. For example, on the “O” activity sheet, they had an orange, octopus, and oven. Each of these immages have completely different beginning sounds. That being said, kids are way smarter than I give them credit for (and clearly the teacher new this) because the students were able to determine the image based on the fact that they new “dog” didn’t start with an “O,” so it must be “orange.” Kids are darn smart.
STATION 2
This was another fun station! Students used magnetic letters to recreate the word, then used a little tile to mark the appropriate image. I thought the magnet letters were a fun alternative to using traditional writing methods (ie: marker, pencil, crayon, etc.). Some of the more advanced students started doing UFLI type activities and started switching out letters to create additional words. For example, a student would make a sequence like sit > sat > cat > cap.
STATION 3
I never actually observed the students participate in this station as I was helping at the first two stations, but I do know they were asked to trace the letter, then say the name of the letter. I wish I had looked at more of the activity sheets, however, to see if any of the images matched letter. I just don’t understand why the creator (of the activity sheets… not of the world – haha) would use an image of an apple for letter “H”?
STATION 4
The teacher managed this station, but from what I saw, she was following the UFLI program. I know she combined some Sound Connections as she went throughout her mini-lesson because I saw students acting out the simple hand gestures as they sounded words out.
Play-Based Learning
Over the Christmas break I listened to the TED Talk, “Are Schools Killing Creativity” and another short video on Instagram about how the school-system is failing young boys by making school a quiet, rigid space where children are expected to behave as adults. I wish I could find the Instagram video because it really spoke to me. My teaching motto is “Let them be little,” and I firmly believe in making learning fun. I love that this Kindergarten teacher did just that. Using bright colored magnets and completing mazes brought so much engagement and excitement into what could have been a boring lesson. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be in such a fun, educational classroom.