Vision Boards with Kindergartners

I got this idea from a tweet posted by the Ron Clark Academy. They did it with high school level students but I think it's important to have students articulate their goals for life even starting in Kinder. What are we working toward? We want to be prepared for 1st Grade, but what about past that? Are you going to graduate from high school? From college? From a trade school?

So the students cut pictures out of magazines that showed what kind of person they wanted to be. They wanted to travel, to eat healthy and do yoga. They wanted to become artists, teachers and police officers. I left some squares of blank paper out where they could draw what they were looking for.

Adequate Yearly Progress

In Texas, we have had a pretty contentious legislative session regarding education funding. One of the things still on the table is to pay teachers a salary based on merit. They feel like they need to be getting more progress for the money they are spending. I have many issues with this-students from poorer areas come to school with less experience even in vocabulary than students from the wealthier parts of town. How do you measure "merit" in P.E., Art, early childhood or Special Ed. Our district used to do merit pay and no teachers Pre-K through 2nd were eligible simply because we did not administer standardized tests.

But my biggest issue with this idea is that the majority of the progress my students make in Kindergarten cannot be measured with a test. I had a student this year who entered school with extreme tantrums daily.  Like flipping tables, screaming at the top of her lungs tantrums. We have worked on strategies to channel those emotions when she gets upset and now after using those tools, those tantrums rarely happen-that is progress!

My students entered Kinder being able to copy print-but not able to write a sentence themselves. Now over 80% of them can sound out their words to write and are incorporating sight words spelled correctly. Are they using proper capitalization and punctuation like our standards require-no, but they have made great progress.

The first day of school, when I asked my students to create/invent something new-they couldn't do it. I asked them to invent a new school supply-they all invented pencils. Now, most of them are using their creative skills to come up with original ideas. When we do a writing activity I am so impressed with how different all the answers are now. That is progress!

The first week of school my students rolled their eyes when it was time for a read-aloud. I purposely take trips to the library every week to look for books they will LOVE. I have read them chapter books, picture books, wordless books. We did author studies with books by Mo Willems and Eric Carle. Now they beg to hear books read to them. That is progress!

When I asked my students to choose a side and support their opinion with an argument in the beginning, they answered with what they thought I wanted to hear. After lots of practice with activities in ethics they can now choose a side and defend that opinion. That is progress!

My students were scared to speak in front of an audience. We did reader's theater for other classes and several presentations for our parents this year and now many of them speak with more confidence. That is progress!

My students are growing up in an area of low economic development. Only one student could identify most of their letters on the first day of school last year. The goal our district sets is that they read at a level D by the end of the year, 40 words per minute. Do you know how hard it is to get a student who starts Day One learning letters and sounds to that level? All but one of my students can identify all letters and sounds now. They can sound out words, they can blend sounds. That is progress!

I will never get any credit for any of these things because they are not skills measured with any test.  When they go to 1st Grade those teachers will not think they were prepared enough for their classes. But the I know and the students know the progress they have made this year. I may not be considered an effective teacher by my state, but I do think I have done things this year to enrich the learning of my students and I stand by that.

Digital Stories for Mother's Day

I want my students to know there are different ways they can be writers. We write digital stories about our moms. I encourage the students to use the literary devices we learned about this year. Everyone loves their moms, everyone thinks there mom is pretty-stretch your thinking a little bit.

I use the program Pixie which is probably outdated but I love how easy it is for the students to navigate. I open 6 slides-they type the text by sounding out their words, they draw illustrations or look for clip art to insert. Then we record their narration and they choose the background music for their video. Pixie puts it all together into a movie.

We invite our moms in tot he room and play all the movies for them. It's a nice day.

A Different Kind of Frame for Moms- A GT Frame

Let me start by saying I do not teach a GT class. Years ago when I got my GT certification, I was so impressed with the techniques that I started using them with my "regular" students. I found that if I used these concepts daily with my Kinder students, they became better thinkers.

We have talked a lot about moms this week. I asked my students to make a GT Frame about moms. Thinking from Multiple Perspectives-what is it like to be a mom? How do you feel?

Rules-what is always true about moms?

Unanswered questions-what do you wonder about moms?

Big Idea-what is the main purpose behind having a mom?

Here's what they came up with:

Language of the Disciplines: Think Like an Architect

I think Language of the Disciplines is one of the hardest of Kaplan's concepts of Depth and Complexity to incorporate with the young ones.

We discussed what architects do. We looked at things like blueprints, scaffolding and foundations. After a few lessons using the new vocabulary, we made "blueprints" of a house design for our mothers. I asked them to think about what their moms would need or appreciate in their design. I wrote what they dictated to me, just so the activity would be done faster. Here is what they came up with.

Writing a Top 10 List

For my students, creating a list of 10 things is pretty rigorous. Some of them ended up repeating ideas, others really stretched their thinking. I am also very proud that they are sounding out their words! :) 

Which Came First?

I LOVE to blow my students' minds! :) We have been working this year to develop an argument to support our opinions about something. These activities are framed as using Ethics from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity. I asked them to think about what came first-the chicken or the egg? When they said "chicken", I said ok, where did the chicken hatch from? "Oh, an egg!"-but who laid the egg? Boom goes the dynamite-their minds were blown!

Here was their response (I wrote what they dictated-this was the day of our Egg Hunt and the students did not have the patience to sound out their words properly).