Sunday, June 24, 2012

Daily 5 Chapter 2

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 think that I do trust most of my students most of the time. There are some times in our day, especially transitions, in which I've been thinking I need to be more in control of them. For example, when some are finished with lunch, we sometimes ask them to wash their hands and wait for us in the hallway, but they often become rowdy and run down the hall and get crazy when alone. I was thinking I need to take them or send them with an assistant, but maybe the answer is to teach them to respect our community and rules and trust them to behave well? I will work on this! Generally, however, I trust them. We have time each day when the children work on Montessori games, and most of them are able to work nicely and follow instructions (such as we are working independently now, or working with one friend quietly). There is one in my class, who is just so sneaky! He has to be watched all the time! Any advice? 

2. How much choice do you give your students throughout the day? Do you go over  your daily schedule with your students or is it just "posted" in the room?

I am very bad about doing the daily schedule. At my last school, I had it posted and we often went over it in the morning. At this school, however, it just never got made. One of my challenges here is that we don't have a lot of space to hang things on the wall, and my director does not like us to use sticky tack to put things up. I have allowed that to limit me a lot this year, but next year I will make these things a priority. Maybe we will have less space to hang up art, but we can change it more often? I definitely do want to make a set of class activities with pictures, and I'd like to go over it each morning during our morning circle. 

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

I think part of creating the sense of community is really getting to know each child at the beginning of the year. I like to have time for children to share each morning, and to get to know each other in the beginning of the year. We often assign buddies the first few weeks of school, and pair children with new children or bilingual children with those who don't yet speak much English. I sometimes pair the boys and girls just to get them to make friends with children they often don't play with. There are a lot of ideas in the The Morning Meeting Book, which I meant to implement this year. I at least did the morning greetings each day but never really got past that. This is another book I need to spend more time with this summer! I do think it's important to spend some time each day building community, as it can help prevent a lot of problems later. One tip is just saying good morning to each other with names every morning. Easy, but it makes a big difference. Everyone feels welcomed and loved, and they start to have that sense of community. I do also try to encourage children to talk to each other and not come running to me every time someone misbehaves, but this is not always working. I need to spend more time in the beginning of the year talking about our rules and why we have them and what we can do when we or someone we see is having trouble with them.

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

I think it is important to let children know why they are doing each activity. I also want children to have the desire to be the best they can be, so I have started talk about this with my kids. One of our class rules is "Do your best," but we had never really talked about WHY we should do it. Last week we had a discussion about it, and we started to try self-evaluations. We would work on an activity and I would ask the children to show me how they think they are doing. If they think they are doing their best, they show a thumbs up. If they think they could do better, they show me a thumb pointing to the side. It's surprising how honest many of them can be, and I really feel it helps them start to develop this sense of ownership in their learning as well as their behavior. I don't want to be the one judging them and correcting them all the time. I want them to be able to look at themselves and see what  they can improve and what they do well. 

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

This is really something I want to work on, and I have downloaded some of the worksheets from Pinterest, which show the goals of reading for five minutes and then longer. After lunch each day my children take a book to "read" alone or with a friend, and some of the children could do it for ages, but many are always asking, can we play yet? Can we draw? I think that setting goals and using a visual representation of how long we've been doing something will really help a lot! I will be excited to get started with this in September. I think Caitlin did make a good point that we need to make sure the children are not so focused on the time goal that they don't focus on what's important. Children can be very competitive! However, I think this will not happen if we review why we are doing what we are doing, and continue to self-evaluate the work they are doing and not just the timing. It is all connected, though, isn't it? 




Monday, June 18, 2012

Daily 5 Chapter 1

I got the book Daily Five when I was in the States in April, and of course I haven't really looked at it. BUT finding this book study through this site  gave me motivation to read! And even more than that, to reflect, discuss, and network! Yay!

So, here goes, bearing in mind I teach 4-5 year olds mostly, so not quite K.

How do I teach new behaviors?

This is something I know I need to work on a LOT, and I am promising myself to be better next year. I usually ask the kids first, show the kids, tell the kids, and often ask for them to demonstrate. However, I do not do enough repetition and practice, AND I realize that I am not always clear enough. I have to be more organized myself so that I can get them to be organized!

How do I teach expectations?

This is another thing I need to work on! From next year, I will work harder to give children AND parents clear expectations about school, behavior, everything! These past few years I have just kind of assumed everyone knew what to do, since they have mostly been going to school for at least a year or two. However, it's important to be crystal clear, post lots of pictures around the room, and be a good example.

How do I monitor student behavior? Whole group? Small groups? Individuals?

I like the idea of self monitoring, and I would like to try more next year. I often get kids to help me, and they are often very well-behaved when one of them has the job of monitoring a small group, for example. I have an assistant, and we both keep our eyes and ears out of mischief. However, I hate to be the one complaining all the time, and I want my kids to start to take control of their own behavior and to WANT to be the best they can be!

What do I do when a student is not exhibiting desired behavior?

This is something else I am working on! In six years I still haven't found the perfect fit, and I would actually like to steer away from sticker charts, traffic lights, etc (all of which I have tried and none of which seem to make much difference in the long run). I think it's a great idea to have the student model the appropriate behavior. I guess I do this with small things such as how to enter/exit the room or walk down the hall. My classroom is a straight shot from the bathroom and it's really hard for some of my kids to resist just running down the straight shot into the room.

Whose classroom is it?

It's MINE! I really need to work on that. Even when I talk about how to treat the things in the class, I say that this book is mine or this one belongs to the library or these games belong to the school. I think it will be best when I start to talk about OUR things and OUR classroom and maybe it will help them feel more of an ownership and pride in keeping it tidy and keeping things in one piece :)

Locus of control?

While I have tried many sorts of organized rewards/charts/etc in the past, I have given it up (except for the occasional random sticker for awesomeness), and I do think it's important for kids to WANT to behave well and to have a sense of pride about how they behave. I start to see it from time to time. These 4 year olds are just starting to be big enough to really be independent and they usually feel so happy with themselves when they know they are doing their best, being responsible little students :)

Where are supplies stored?

Most supplies are within reach of the kids. We rarely use the stapler or tape, but when we do use tape, I get it out and let the kids who are interested use it. I am pretty good about letting those, who want and can, do things independently. Gotta be careful, though as this age is just experimenting a lot. I have some papers with the date stamped all over them :) Goes back to my problem with teaching procedures I guess...

Sunday, June 17, 2012

I keep thinking I need to start a blog, so here it is. I am not yet the teacher I want to be, but I hope having a blog will help motivate me to do my best and move in the direction I want to grow.