Week 3

Mrs. Morris asked in the last post,
"What will be my biggest challenge now that I have met my new class?"

The whole day is very challeging for me in Kindergarten. Coming from second semester third grade last semester, it is a HUGE leap backwards to first semester Kindergarten. I often find myself frustrated with the students, some of the students are defiant and don't know how to be a part of a large group. There are also several students who are great and want to be in school. This large range of 23 students makes the day very difficult right now. I feel like this is the biggest chellenge right now and will just take time for the children to adjust to being in school all day.

The week flew by. We worked on the Kindergarten Baseline assessment as a whole group over the course of the week, we finally finished it on Friday. I also took students one by one to assess their reading readiness. Asking questions such as, "Point to me the title of this book." and "Show me a capital letter." There weren't any students who got all of the questions correct. The item that seemed to stump all but 2 or 3 of the students was the concept of the period. I believe all could not point to me a sentence in the text. Many pointed to a picture when I asked them to find me a sentence.

I feel this was a good test to determine where these students starting point. I also worked on flashcards with each of the students individually with their words/letters for the week: 1, one, red, I, am, A, a, B, b. This was also a good assessment to gather information on the students progress throughout the week. I worked on these concepts all week. I ask myself the questions, "What can I do differently next week? How can I better help these students understand what we are teaching them?"

I will be starting to teach Math next Wednesday. I wil be covering the concept of sorting. Sorting by color, shape, size, etc. I am looking forward to this.