Daily 5 : Chapter 4

Well, since I have NO prior knowledge in working with kindergartners, I am going to take this as an opportunity to plan what I will do with my class this fall. So the following answers are my "plan" not based on my actual experiences. 

1)  How far into the school year do you think kinders need to be to be able to begin the process of Read to Self?  What is realistic?  When do you plan to begin implementation? While reading the chapter I keep wondering if this is doable. I think since we will be working on read the pictures and retell the story, we can start early in the year. I am not sure I will be ready to start day 1. I think I need some time to teach classroom rules/expectations. Teach them where supplies are kept, etc... I also want to start doing calendar math the first day and I believe that will take up a large chunk of time. Realistically, I would like to start on Monday of week two. 


2) How will you make sure that each child views him/herself as a reader (whether they are reading words or not)? I will just keep telling them and referring to them as readers. Since I have a kindergarten aged daughter, I think this comes naturally to me! See, I have been practicing, "Oh, my goodness, you are such a great reader! I love the way you told me what was happening in the pictures!" I will also send home a note that first week explaining this to the parents and encourage them to encourage their children! Update: Click here to see an awesome parent note I found on Google Docs. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original author or pin.


3) What are some ideas you have about "Launching Read to Self" in kindergarten?  How will you go about it and what are some ways to make sure it is "kinder friendly"?  I like the way the sisters explain it in the book. I will use their strategy. I like the part about placing them around the room and making sure to put them in a different spot each time. I am guilty of giving too much independence too quickly so it definitely won' t be natural to me to physically pick a place for them to sit, but that is my plan!


4) How will you/do you build the children's belief that this IS important?  What can we do to encourage the ones who do not value it and create disruptions for others? I think this is where we are lucky as kindergarten teachers. Most kids come to us ready to believe anything we tell them. They have not had enough experiences yet to tell them they are not readers, or reading is not important. If we make it important and fun and we make it seem urgent, I think they will believe in it too. I can also see making an anchor chart where we brainstorm "why people read" We can refer back to this whenever someone is not taking reading seriously. I know there will always be disruptive kids, but perhaps if these children are shown a little extra love/attention/support they will thrive on the structure and choice provided to them in the Daily 5. 


5) How valuable is Checking In and Reviewing with kindergarteners?  How often will you do it?  When will you do it? What are some different ways to "check in"?I think checking in is extremly important with all grades. Students learn very quickly how to "play" the game if they see there is no accountability. We need to show them that we care about what they are doing during this time everyday. I also think this is a perfect time to review expectations and have class meeting to nip things in the bud before they get out of control. This is a perfect time for those teachable moments. Therefor, I plan to check in every day (at least for the first few months). It will probably be at the carpet most days and be very short. Maybe we can come up with some fun ways to check in after we get our feet wet! I am thinking a song or chant like, "my name is Heather, and I chose read to self" clap, clap. You get the idea!


6)What are some problems that can occur during this time (either that you anticipate with your kinders OR that you have experienced)?  How can we be proactive about these issues?  I think the biggest problem will be staying on task (even for 3 minutes) one thing I can do is continue to model, model, model (again, not a strength) and refer back to our anchor lessons. I will stop as soon as a child is off task as to not build the wrong muscle memory. I think making a big deal like class cheers and maybe a song/dance when we meet our goals will help them feel excited and happy to be a part of our "team." When we are team, everyone will work together to see that we are all successful! 
**Sorry, I am feeling all "everything is going to be rosy in my classroom", a sure sign of summer break! Let me try that answer again.**
I still agree with what I posted above. However, perhaps there will be a child or two that does not get to pick which daily 5 they are working on or where they get to sit during this time. Perhaps I will have to choose for them until they have earned my trust back. By picking for them, or having them work at a location away from other students, I can be proactive in keeping the rest of the class on track. 


Thanks to Krissy for hosting this chapter. Click on her button to take you back over there and read more about chapter 4. 








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Daily 5: Chapter 3

I am linking up again with Tammy over at Live, Love, Laugh Everyday in Kindergarten for my reflections of chapter 3 in The Daily 5.

Tammy gave us things to think about while reading chapter 3:

1. Establish a gathering place for brain and body breaks.  I have always just called out meeting spot "the carpet." Original, I know. Feel free to use it if you must. LOL! I had never thought about calling it something else.... hmm. Maybe home base? I will work on that!


 2. Developing the concept of "good fit" books.  I have been doing lots of thinking about this. I like the shoe example from the book and I think that is a good jumping off spot. I think I would even leave some shoes at school as a visual or take pictures of the kids wearing ill fitting and good fitting shoes to add to our anchor chart. I also love the Goldilocks idea from Tammy. It makes perfect sense and most students will already be familiar with the concept that she had to find something that was "just right" for her. Again, understanding that the way Poppa Bear liked it was not the right way for her. I see us having a LOT of discussion around making choices that are right for us and not just because our best friend is doing it. I found this band-aid story on Pinterest (shocker) and the lesson on differentiation  lends itself to this discussion as well. By the way, how cute is her blog? Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say is, to me, at the very beginning of the year, I think this is more about doing what is best for you and your learning rather than finding the perfect book. The conversation needs to become about just right books but I don't think they will be ready for it first thing. I want to focus more on why we read and ways to read. Letting the kids be excited about picture reading and books in general. I would hate to discourage a hesitant reader by making them choose a different book because they've read this one too many times! 

3. Create anchor charts with students: When I first started teaching I bought all the cute charts from the teacher store. Guess what? The kids never referred to them - duh!. So, yes, we make all our anchor charts together and I post them where they can be seen by everyone. I leave them up as long as I can or as long as the information is relevant. I do not store them from year to year. In fact, this year I had so many kids who wanted to bring them home (to play school), that I had a drawing and sent them home the last week of school. I feel it is important to keep referring to the charts and even add to them as needed. I sure wish I could draw though.. some examples I have seen are amazing. Mine are pretty boring looking :(  I also adore the idea of taking a picture of each chart and keeping them in a binder to refer back to as needed. I could see doing this with the chart paper poems we work on each week. So students would be able to reread them whenever they'd like too! 

4. Short, repeated intervals of independent practice and setting up book boxes. I am going to use a timer and a graph paper (extra math practice??) to keep track of our stamina. I have seen a lot of people post that they hate stopping for one or two off task children. I agree and it is so frustrating. Especially if you feel that student just can't help it! However, I am a big sports person and I believe the expression, "you are only as strong as your weakest link." So, with that mindset, I see why it makes sense to stop even for just one student. 

As far as book boxes go, I am in trouble! As you know, I have been teaching third grade so none of my books are appropriate. We do have a pretty amazing public library, school library and a guided reading library at my school. I guess I will be raiding those!! 

I hate to spend the money, but I think I am going to buy some book boxes from Really Good Stuff or the Container Store. I love to craft but the idea of making 20 + book boxes doesn't sound fun!

5. Calm Signals and check in procedures I use class/yes and the chime. Class/yes works really well for whole group but I don't think I will want to be saying it loud enough to get everyone's attention while they are all over the room. Plus, if they are tuning out other talking during the rotation, like the sound of my group or the people buddy reading, they may not hear the "class" and I still won't have their attention. I think the chime works because it is just a sound that cuts through everything else. I think I will follow it up with "hands and eyes" to make sure everyone has stopped and is giving me their full attention! I also like the way whole brain uses counting to transition back to the carpet. - hey, that's another things we can graph!


6. Using the correct model/incorrect model approach for demonstrating appropriate behaviors. 
Um, I kind of hate the idea of practicing wrong. Whenever I have tried this, the kids act SO goofy that it is not very helpful. I think I like the idea of looks like/sounds like charts better. Also, having conversations like, "what should we do if Johnny is talking to you while you are doing read to self?" I also love the idea of taking pictures of the kids modeling the "right" way and posting them around the room as mini anchor charts. 


 I had a teacher from a different school tell me about Class Dojo. 
I may use this as a management tool during the whole day. I like that you have the option to show only the positive points awarded or points lost. I currently use a clip chart so I think this works in a similar way. You can reward (move up/give points) for desired behavior. I still would prefer to teach kids to act a certain way because it is the right thing to do, but students this young seem to need something extrinsic. I will continue to work towards intrinsic management though! I also love this site because it is built in behavior data for RTI! 

If you made it to the bottom of this LONG post, go get yourself something yummy to eat!!

Daily 5 Book Study: Chapter 2

Welcome to my thoughts on chapter 2!

1. Do you trust your students? How do you build this trust?Yes, I trust them with their own learning and I trust them to do what they are suppose to do after we have sent our expectations and practiced, practiced, practiced.  Are you able to trust them and allow them to be independent throughout all aspects of your day?I am not sure about this one yet. It will depend largely on the group I get and what they are capable of. I always start off giving kids independence to choose. If they can't handle it, I need to make the choices for them. I agree with the sisters though that we are all more apt to learn more when we are giving a choice on what/when to do things. It is like the old joke where you let your husband THINK he made the decision. Are you going to be able to stay out of their way? This is the most difficult for me. I still argue that I am not type A but I think others would disagree. I do like to micromanage just about everything... I am really going to work to stay out of their way though. I find when I can get out of the way, I am amazed at what the kids do/say!

2. How much choice do you give your students throughout the day? (would love for you to share some examples!) I think this will be different in kindergarten. In third, I would often allow students to pick their own seat on the rug, pick their own partner, and pick their own math rotation with the framework of my expectations. I am a big proponent of making good choices. If a student was not making good choices during a group activity, they had to continue on their own at their seat. My language is very specific. "___, when you choose to _____, you made the choice to leave the group and work on your own." I think if we don't allow students to make choices (especially the wrong ones) when will they learn how to make them? That is not to say it comes easily for me, I struggle with it daily!! It is cool to see a student not pick their best friend and say something like, "I think I will get my work done better if I work with Johnny today."  Do you go over your daily schedule with your students or is it just 'posted' in the room? I write a daily schedule on the board before I leave the night before. In third grade, students would come in and read it. They would refer to it throughout the day. I found it to be a good way to keep me organized, especially when teaching 2 different groups per day. It held me accountable for what I'd planned! With the kindergartners, I think I will make some sort of picture to go with each item posted on our agenda since most won't be able to read it on their own. I can also see us reading it together as part of our morning meeting.

3. How are you going to create that sense of community where students will hold each other accountable? Last year I introduced pieces of Responsive Classroom. The kids loved the morning meeting and really were upset when we skipped it. I plan hold a morning meeting every day with my kinders. It was hard in third because I had 2 groups and not enough time with state testing. 

4. Student ownership in learning? I think it is hard for kids to understand or see a connection to why learning is important. I think repeated conversations and pointing out when their learning has helped them is one way.I am eager to hear what others think. How do you instill this in every child? Can you instill it in every child? I hope so. Again, I think building a community, talking openly about their learning, and valuing their work by displaying it sets the right tone,

5. Stamina! How are you going to build stamina with reading? independent work? Will you use a timer? Will you set goals? ... Yes! I have seen some great graphs to aide this process. This is where I will need to remind myself, "go slow to go fast!" I will use a timer and when one student gets off task, we will stop, look at the timer and graph the results. Then we can discuss how we improved or the reason we slid back. I can also see having a mini party (a song to dance to) when we reach our goal!

Here is the organizer from Live Laugh Love in Kindergarten

Thanks to Kindergarten Smiles for hosting chapter 2. Check out her blog to see the links to all the other kindergarten bloggers

Daily 5 Book Study: Chapter 1

I am linking up with Tammy over at Live, Love Laugh for the daily 5 book study and my fist ever linky party!! I have previously read the book but then was moved into a math/science position and never used it. This year, I am so excited to be heading to kindergarten (after teaching 3rd for the last 8 years) and I plan to use the Daily 5 model for my ELA and Math block!!! I can't wait to read all the fabulous ideas other kindergarten teachers have. Everything is new to me and I am more than a bit nervous. Now, onto the guiding questions.

1. How do I teach new behaviors?

Well, all my answers will be from a third grade perspective, as that is the only perspective I have. Just like everyone else said, I model, model, model. We make anchor charts together and refer back to them as needed. I have students model correct and incorrect behavior and we discuss. As a third grade teacher, I think I moved too quickly with behaviors and routines. Assuming that they should "know" all the expectations by third grade after a few weeks of practicing. That was not a correct assumption in third and I know for sure I need to get my act together for kindergarten as it will be a year-long process. 

2. How do I teach expectations?

We talk about expectations. I let them know my expectations over and over and over again and I reward those meeting or exceeding the expectations by clipping up on the clip chart, making a comment for the whole class to hear, sending in an encouraging note to be read over the announcements, or even calling/writing home. Of course this is not every time, and I use verbal praise/clipping up the most often. I really, really want to work towards a non extrinsic model where students learn to do things and want to do things because they are the "right" thing to do.   

3. How do I monitor student behavior? whole group? small groups? individual?

I really have gone away from using whole class rewards although my campus has a lot of low socio-economic students many of whom, because of the level of poverty, exhibit ADD/ADHD like behaviors. So, I may rethink this, especially early in the year. Maybe I could start with whole class rewards and reduce the frequency in which they are awarded as the year goes on? For individual students, I used a clip chart in third grade - not sure if it will be coming with me to kinder. 

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

Last year I started using pieces of whole brain teaching. I loved it and the students did too. I plan to learn more about it this summer through the staff development on their website. To answer this question though, I would say most of them time I try to find someone exhibiting the desired behavior and praise them for that. If that does not change the undesired behavior, I have the student clip down and we talk about it through  series of questions I learned at Capturing Kids Hearts. If that doesn't work, they clip down again and miss some time from recess. During that time, they practice reciting the rule (from whole brain teaching) that they were breaking. So, for example, if Johnny kept talking when I was teaching, he would practice saying, "rule number 2, raise your hand for permission to speak" a few times during recess. We would then have a mini conference. 

5. Whose classroom is it?

Like everyone else, I struggle with this one. I so badly want it to be OUR classroom and I have grown in this area but my default response is, it is MY classroom.

6. Locus of control?

Clipping up and down, positive notes home, stickers. I work so hard to make the rewards be internal but maybe they are just too young? Maybe they need external rewards still. I will continue to try to find a balance here and explicitly teach children to monitor their feelings. "How did you feel when you did _____ when I wasn't even watching?" I bet that made you feel proud of yourself. Isn't that such a good feeling? 

7. Where are supplies stored?
Every student had a cubby with their pencil box and basic supplies. Bigger supplies or things they need for Daily 5 will be kept on shelves at eye level. I really want them to have access to everything they need so I can be free to teach. As long as expectations have been set, I think the kids are perfectly capable of getting what they need to complete their work. I also plan to have pictures on the board like this showing what supplies they will need for each component.

After thinking about these questions and my responses, I have LOTS to decide on before my sweet kinders show up at the door in August. I better get myself together. 

As you can see, I am very new to this blogging world. If you could leave some comments and follow my blog, that would be amazing! Thanks for stopping by~~

Now head on over to Tammy's blog to see all the other fabulous blogger's thoughts on the subject