Travis Snyder

11/12/12 7:00am-2:30pm

Exploration #4

7:00 a.m. – Morning briefing with other kindergarten teachers if need be. They discuss plans for the day ahead.

7:30 a.m. – Students are first allowed to enter classroom. As students arrive their morning routine moves like clockwork. Only after a couple of weeks students remember to say good morning to the teacher, hand her their folders, move milk card, wash hands, see what the smart board says, and then free time if the teacher doesn’t have a classroom activity. Most of the time if I’m there she will have me do it with them. Today we painted pumpkins as a seasonal thing and not so much a holiday thing One child doesn’t celebrate Halloween so the activity needs to feel seasonal. The children have the choice to paint faces at home once they paint their pumpkins. Once they finished they have choice time with their friends until all the students show up or 8:15 a.m. this is a great time for parents to bring up any concerns or inform the teacher of any new issue that may show a problem for the classroom.

 This shows a wonderful time for children to ease into school without too much commotion so early in the morning. Many children have a blank face walking into school as if they just awoke. The smart board has a way of jumping the small brains by giving them a question they can read with their parents and answer. Today the question asked if the children could place a tally if they were a boy or girl. Later the class will realize how many boys and girls are in the classroom for an upcoming activity.

8:15 a.m. – Students are asked to clean their messes up and meet on the alphabet rug. Once everyone is settled and bodies are still. They read the morning message together which is very important. Reading similar messages everyday helps students recognize simple words called “muscle words” for example is, a, the, me….. The morning message read “Good morning, this afternoon you will be going to P.E. today”. After they read the morning message they count how many boys and how many girls are on the board. Learning this they are asked to stand for another greeting game where the boys make a circle on the outside and the girls make a circle on the inside. Since there are more boys than girls the circles work. A song is read and the boys move to their right and girls move to their right. Since they are looking at each other they travel in opposite directions. when the song finishes the child looking across from one another says their friends name and the song plays again. Children loved this.

8:30 a.m. The students have a story read to them for an introduction to Reader’s Workshop. Today I was asked to take half the class and read small sentences with my group together. It is an opportunity for children to move around for a small task. Once we finish the children return to the rug and the Reader’s Workshop or Literacy Stations as the children call it was as follows (see back page labeled ‘Our Literacy Stations”). The stations change every day until each colored table has done every station. Once the students finish one station they move on to the station below.

9:15 a.m. SNACK!!! A wonderful time for students to interact with each other and share war stories from the night. My teacher does a great job with including every student each day. Since there are five tables each day she sits with another table. On Monday she sits with the red table, on Tuesday see sits with the blue table and so on and so on. This is one plan I plan on using when I become a teacher. Today I asked the teacher if I could turn the lights off during snack because I did this for another class and they thought it was such a treat. If the students get to loud the lights come on and snack continues. The students loved it and abided by these rules. The teacher told me she will use that in the future.

9:30 a.m. – Writer’s Workshop is opened with a story about a pumpkin patch losing pumpkins. The activity was an experiment where the teacher placed a small pumpkin in a tub with water and soil and the students needed to guess what would happen in a couple months. The student came up with great hypothesis like the pumpkin will rot, or another pumpkin will grow, or the pumpkin will get larger. The students were then asked to draw the pumpkin now and in a moth the class will look at the pumpkin again and draw it again.  The teacher drew an image of the pumpkin looking very simple not being to intimidating for the children. The teacher and I walked around helping students sound out words and reminded them to pinch their pencils when writing.

10:20 a.m. -RECESS!!!!!!!! Children were not allowed outside until a quite, still, and single filed line was formed. The students were counted off learning new numbers as they were tapped softly on the head. Student were expected to answer an “exist card” before enjoying their outside time. Spell “my” was the mission today.

10:45 a.m. -The children line up for lunch, the quietest line/class leaves first for lunch. This proves to be difficult after just going mad for 25 minutes straight.

10:50 a.m. –Lunch. Once again the students are told many times to quiet down and eat their lunch. The children are read a story to quiet them down. When a student has too many reminders at lunch they sit alone for the reminding lunch period and will “practice” quiet bodies the next day during recess period for ten minutes.

11:30 a.m. – Math     . Many events happen during math; once everyone is placed onto the rug they all count the number of days in the month of November until they get to the 12^th. Once they get here the teacher flips the card over to show a 12. After she tells them “today is November 12^th 2012” the students are told to count backwards together from 12 to 0. Children aren’t as loud until they reach ten. I’m guessing most children have heard 10-0 a couple of time between T.V. and other events. Three smart board activities are done. The first asks the children what the weather was like outside. Today was sunny so a circle was placed in the “sunny” graph. The second asked the children how many days they have been in school. They counted together as they reached 55. The third page asked the children to map the weather on the calendar of November. The children compare the months to see which months had the most sun. September won. After these activities the teacher shows the children skittles candy. The children are excited. The teacher shows what she wants the students to do. Once the skittles have been opened place the skittles into groups. After the skittles have been placed in groups the graph needs to be filled out properly to the number of skittles. Once the children showed me or the teacher they have completed this they may eat their skittles. Once they finish they are able to play with math games.  Dice games where children fill in graphs with the number they roll, shapes they build to make creatures, categorize bugs and graph…. Children are also able to go from table to table and play different games. Surprisingly children are equally dispersed.

12:10- P.E.  I go with the children to P.E. they have a lot of energy. They focus on soccer today.

I needed to leave for a doctor’s appointment.

12:50- Science and Social Studies.

1:30- Fun-dations

2:00- Dismissal

1.      Monologues-a prolonged talk or discourse by a single speaker, especially one dominating or monopolizing a conversation.

2.      Schema- an underlying organizational pattern or structure; conceptual framework: A schema provides the basis by which someone relates to the events he or she experiences.

3.      Text-to-other- reading a story to children

4.      Text-to-Text- connection between two text for one understanding.

5.      Text-to-Self – connection between one text and an event that has occurred to you at sometime in your life.

6.      Thinking out loud- talking aloud to yourself to better understand an issue or problem.

7.      Making connections- relationship, bind, link, and bond.

8.      Making inferences- the process of arriving at some conclusion that, though it is not logically derivable from the assumed premises, possesses some degree of probability relative to the premises.

9.      Recalling information- to bring back from memory; recollect; remember:

10.  Explaining information-to make plain or clear; render understandable or intelligible:

11.  Applying information- to bring into action; use; employ:

12.  Analysis-a presentation, usually in writing, of the results of this process:

13.  Synthesis- the combining of the constituent elements of separate material or abstract entities into a single or unified entity ( opposed to analysis,)

14.  Evaluating information-to judge or determine the significance, worth, or quality of; assess:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.      Monolog in my school typically looks like students washing hands after using the bathroom. The classroom are so occupied that every child plays with another or fights with another. Chances are that no student is ever playing alone or talking to themselves. The sink is the only place where self communication occurs. Every morning students have choice time where they are welcome to play with anything in the classroom that they desire. What they play with is always with another child. Teachers need to induce monologs by calling on raised hands and quite bodies. Once they are called on one child may talk while others listen. 

2.      Schemas occur after lunch during math time when students always count the days of month and determine which day today is. Once the number is presented the children are required to count up to the date and then down from the date to zero. Also any other on counting that may occur like birthdays, concerts, and vacations. The schema never changes except for the number of the day.

3.      Text-to-other. Book buddies have become popular in my school where the kindergarteners walk to a fourth grade classroom and the upper classmen read stories to the kindergarteners. The kindergarteners feel comfortable being read to but someone similar to them. Also each child is receiving one on one attention making them feel important.

4.      Text-to-Text.the teacher models a story book with requirements of a picture box to be filled in and one small sentence below. The teacher recently drew a picture of her two children and wrote a sentence that said “I Love My Children” once she was finished she reminded them if the finish early they could label the objects in their picture.

5.      Text-to-Self. When the teacher reads the children a story everyday/twice daily she leaves time for children, after the story, to comment on the story from connections from home life. Leaving one to two minutes after each story gives the children a chance to feel heard and proud that they could share with the whole class.

6.      Thinking out loud occurs once again during math time. Children need to be able to focus on counting on their fingers and most of the time they are saying the numbers out loud to help them not lose their train of thought. Nothing is worse than losing count from distractions.

7.      Making Connections between math and science happens often during school time counting bugs in order to sort them is exactly what they do. Connections from rhyming words helps children to learn chunk words better. Mama Llama gives children the chance to learn new words with the same chunks as others.

8.      Making inferences occur during an experiment like the pumpkin experiment at school. A small pumpkin, soil, and water were placed into a large tub and the students were able to predict what would happen over a period of time.

9.      Recalling information happens often in the classroom. Everyday my teacher says to the children “remember yesterday when we….., well we are going to do it again today, but….” The children are asked to recall information every day.

10.   Explaining information happens during readers and writers workshops every time where the teacher always “models” what to do first and how she would like them to do it. the children are hearing and seeing on the Elmo what the teacher does first. If the student for some other reason doesn’t understand then the one on one help happens while other students are working on the asked assignment.

11.  Applying information right after the teacher explains the information. The children are tested on how well the students retained the information just explained. Sometimes students were talking during the lecture or something distracted them. The children are also applying how they read to different books from a text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world connections.

12.  Analysis- once the children think they have finished their work is shown to the teacher before other activities happen. If too many students are having trouble then the teacher finds another way of helping them. One skill is showing work from another student under the Elmo. The students are able to relate from peers showing what is expected from them.

13.  Synthesis and teamwork go hand in hand. When children are given jobs in order to complete a task they are learning self control, team bonding, and completion. One activity that was done was the children needed to figure out the alphabet cards without any help from the teacher. Each child was given a card and some directions to complete the alphabet without fighting.

14.  Evaluating information happens with assessment tools on testing the children’s knowledge of the taught common core curriculum. If students have trouble explaining what is demanded from them then one on one meetings and attention are given to make sure that student doesn’t fall behind on the learning wagon.