KD5 Chapter 2

Still playing catch up...
Chapter 2 is brought to us today from Kindergarten Smiles:

1. Do you trust your students? How do you build this trust? Are you able to trust them and allow them to be independent throughout all aspects of your day? Are you going to be able to stay out of their way? ;)

 I am going to be honest, this was hard at first. At the beginning of the year, I have to learn to trust them. I do this by teaching the behaviors and expectations over and over again. Once they demonstrate the appropriate behaviors I have no problem trusting them to work independently...during Daily 5. I am not very good at doing this during the rest of the school day. 

This year I am going to implement Daily 5 Math or a version of it. I also want to do Calendar notebooks so students can take control of that aspect of our day as well.

 

2. How much choice do you give your students throughout the day? (would love for you to share some examples!) Do you go over your daily schedule with your students or is it just 'posted' in the room?

 I post the agenda with the students each morning. We set the non-choice items first (specials, lunch, 90-minute reading block, recesses, etc.) then we fill in everything else we need to get done that day. I have an idea of how I want the day to go, but if students would rather go to the computer lab before doing math I don't have a problem with that. 

Students obviously choose what they want to do during Daily 5, they will be able to choose what they want to do during Daily 5 Math, and they help make our agenda. That is about all, I think. :o)

 

3. How are you going to create that sense of community where students will hold each other accountable?

 When beginning Daily 5 students begin to notice when their friends pop up from their choice I ring the chimes and call everyone back together. Some students will groan or begin to chastise the student who got up. I use this as a teachable moment to brainstorm ways we can help our friends gain more stamina. This also leads to a lesson about how our choices affect others. 

Every morning we begin with a morning meeting, I think this helps us create a sense of community, too.

 

4. Student ownership in learning? How do you instill this in every child?

 This is hard. I use a chart for each essential learning for each child. Each student has a "target" paper. I give a pre-test and their score is put on the paper with a sticker. (Center dot is desired goal, middle ring is some mastery, outer ring is mastery only with support, outside of the target is no observation of skill.) I meet with each student to show them what they know regarding the skill and where they need to go. We talk about what we are going to do to get there. This actually takes surprisingly little time and makes a big impact. 

For skills like ABC identification, letter-sound correspondence, and sight word recognition I have a list of all the words/letters and I highlight the word/letter when the child has the specific skill mastered. 

For example: If we are working on letter-sound correspondence, and the child consistently tells me "B" says /b/ I will highlight b. 

The students know the goal is to have all of them highlighted and they like to compete with themselves to get more letters or words highlighted each time we meet.

 

5. Stamina! How are you going to build stamina with reading? independent work? Will you use a timer? Will you set goals? ...

 I do not use a timer. I look at the clock on our wall to keep track of our stamina. We write it down and try to beat our time next round. Next year, I want to use a visual tracker in the hallway to show off our stamina to the rest of the school. 

Something that really helped build stamina in my students was to compete against the first grade classes' stamina. The first graders were only able to last a few minutes at the beginning of the year. Kindergarten students are generally so timid at the beginning they have more stamina purely because they don't know anyone else to talk to! 

Having longer stamina than the big kids really helps motivate them to work hard.