It's Never Too Late

We are coming towards the end of the school year… Only two months left to go… and yet I find myself revamping and redoing my entire curriculum! When something is broken you don't just leave it be and let it sit there broken, taking up space… NO, instead you find a way to fix it or throw it away. That my friends is what I have decided to do.

Let me give you a little refresher… I was on leave for the first two months of school (gasp!!) I know EXACTLY what you are thinking, and you'd be correct. I came back in November to a giant mess!!! And I mean a M-E-S-S!!! While my kiddos were safe, and loving school, there were no expectations set for them, well at least not up to my standards. So for the two months of school I had to "retrain" my little ones on how to do EVERYTHING - from how to unpack, no we do NOT hand the teacher each paper out of our backpacks one at a time, to review bathroom rules - no we cannot all go to the bathroom every ten minutes. It was quite the uphill battle and I'm still facing some struggles now at the end of the year but each day we are getting better, we are learning more, and we are becoming smarter! Another unique characteristic of my little class is that 21/25 of my students are seen by the ELL teacher four days a week. Because I have such a high number of students who receive services I work closely with the ELL teacher and she typically pushes in once a day… at times she will pull my most struggling students out to work in a smaller group in a quiet setting.

That being said I realized after our second benchmark assessments for the year that my kiddos just weren't making the grade, so to speak. I found this both disappointing and frustrating! Most peoples first reaction might be to blame my circumstances - well you missed the beginning of the year, you work in a Title 1 school with high needs students, the majority of your students don't speak English as their first language and most of their families cannot read, write or speak English so there is little help and support at home. And yes, in some respects they would be right. But it's too easy to place blame elsewhere. SO I sat and I sat and I sat and I thought and I thought and I thought some more… I was at a loss… what can I do, how can I change this. This my friends, is where the blogging world was my biggest resource! I started scouring the Kindergarten blogs to see what everyone else was doing and I started reaching out to other Kindergarten teachers for advice. My greatest source of help immediately was Mr. Greg over at The Kindergarten Smorgasboard. THANK YOU MR. GREG!!! Not only was he patient and kind in answering my questions his advice to purchase the book The Next Step In Guided Reading was AMAZING! I can't sing his praise enough. I took this book and I have made it my most prized possession (for now!)

After reading the book I then got down to making literacy centers. They aren't perfect and they are a work in progress but they are something, and the kids are independent at them!! So to me that is a major plus! Using this book I began my guided reading… well, let me just say that my kiddos have LOVED the new curriculum. They are enjoying meeting with me at least once a week (I'm working on managing my groups and my time better to meet with them two or three times a week - I CAN DO IT!!) and I'm seeing such positive changes in them. They are beginning to develop a love for reading. They are feeling empowered because they are completing their centers on their own.

You'd think with two months left of the year I'd just keep going the way I'm going since things are running smoothly… if you believe that, then you don't know me very well! Now that I've got a decent handle on my guided reading I'm on to make my centers even better. For this I've reached out to Marsha at A Differentiated Kindergarten. First off she already has amazing centers that she makes and sells, but again I found someone who has been patient and kind and willing to share her knowledge. I am currently reading EVERY (yes I said every) post she has written about Daily 5. Not to mention on my wish list to purchase next is the Daily 5 book. My goal is to hopefully get at least one, if not two of my 5 independent centers differentiated by the end of the year. I'm also working to get a sensory station up and going in the next week or two! I cannot wait for this, and Marsha was my inspiration. I went out on a limb this past week and asked if I could try one out. I didn't get a two thumbs up, but I did get a give it a try and I'll come see what it's about… for me that's good enough! (At my former school a sensory bin would have been frowned upon!)

I've gotten so push back from some people about the logic of changing so much so close to the end of the year. But here's my logic - 1) Don't these kids deserve to get the best I have to offer? So if I find something new that I think will help them shouldn't I give it a try? 2) These kids are great and they are flexible, they adapt well, and they understand the ideas of how to work in centers - so why not try new things with them? I'm not talking about totally changing their centers - but rather make them differentiated!

And guess what - while some teachers might be shocked at the thought of changing so much so close to the end my administration is smiling! They are loving it! They have given my their blessings. They come in often to see what I'm doing and are hoping to have others come and visit me too! I'm no expert yet, but that is my goal! I'm hoping to be the best I can be and expand my knowledge and learning even more to better help my students succeed!

I'm looking forward to continue my adventures of centers and guided reading - and hopefully, eventually daily 5… (I do know I need to work on getting certain supplies, like items to use for listen to reading, guess I'll be looking in to Donors Choice soon)…

Self-Evaluation Equals Becoming a Better Teacher!

Confessions: I miss blogging, I miss connecting with other teachers in a way that only happens in the virtual world of teacher blogging! I want to be at the I Teach K conference in Vegas! I want to be asked to be a presenter! I want to share with the world my joy of learning and help other teachers the way I know I can…. I just don't know where to start!

To help me get back into blogging I decided to take the #Kinderblog14 blogger challenge. Challenge 1,  write the blog post you've been meaning to write, or have had on the draft board and never finished. For almost a week now I tried to figure out where to start, where to jump in… then I checked my draft board and found this one I started back in NOVEMBER! Like I said, I haven't blogged in a LONG time!!!!

So here is what I started writing back in November 2013:

As many of you know I've been posting a lot about my excitement of working in a new school... well 39 days down and that excitement hasn't changed. I'm finding that this new school is pushing me to become a better teacher than I ever imagined! Both my APs (assistant principals) have set the bar pretty high for me and I am doing everything in my power to reach that bar.

This past week I started doing math centers. Our math curriculum is centered around the use of a text book, which for my ELL students I have found to not be very engaging. I got permission to use the textbook as I see fit and teach the concepts in various ways, including centers, games, and hands on learning! I still have to administer the mid-chater and end of chapter tests from the program... which if all goes well my kids should be able to do because my centers and hands on approach will hopefully help my kiddies learn the math concepts. So center based math it was. We are focusing on the numbers 0-9 as well as the terms, greater than, less then and introducing simple adding and subtracting (without actually introducing those terms: I have three apples, my brother has 2 more apples than me, how many apples does my brother have).

I met with one of my APs last week to share what I was doing and he challenged me - how are you holding the students accountable to what they are learning? How are you tracking what they are doing? Good question! I have 6 tables in my classroom - so I made 6 centers.

This is what I used to do: One center was a teacher lead center where I work on the skills each group needs. Right now my big focus for the majority of the class is to master the idea of one number at a time. My high fliers are working on counting on, and addition problems using the terms more and less. This center always had some sort of product I could keep and file - whether it was a page stapled in their math journal or their math tests. I had one center that was math books - we don't have a lot of time to read/look at books and I thought this might be an interesting way to bring books into another part of our day. I had a number writing center, and a few games of matching numbers.

After meeting with my AP and his questions about accountability I started to think... hmm... I need to find a way to make these centers have more meaning. I scoured the internet and found some great teachers who were willing to help me out! One teacher in particular: Crystal @ Kreative Kinder was amazing!!! I mean above and beyond when it came to answering my millions of questions (and she's willing to answer even more of my questions!) I've spent most of the time picking Crystal's brain about literacy centers (because, yes trying one new thing at a time is just not going to work for me!) but one great idea I got from Crystal was to basically have two centers in one. First the kids would do a paper and pencil activity which would be followed by a quiet activity.

And here is my current follow-up:
The reality - my goal of doing centers all the time fell much shorter than I like. Lack of supplies and cost were only part of the problem. Trying to learn a new curriculum AND trying to invent and incorporate centers was challenging to me at times. I decided that I needed to slow down and not jump in without looking. I spent most of the year embracing the new curriculum I was teaching and trying to learn the ins and outs of it. I wanted to get a good handle on the curriculum, figure out what I love and what I hate would like to improve upon for the next school year.

I think I have a good idea now on what our literacy and math curriculums are all about and I'm excited to spend time this summer planning and trying to make them a bit more interactive. Do you have any suggestions or favorite teacher bloggers who have great kindergarten math center ideas?

I really hope this blogger challenge helps get my creativity for blogging flowing again! :)