Tuesday 27.7.2010

“The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.” - Orison Marden

What a day.. I think I must have left my problem solving and creative thinking skills at home... There were so many behaviour management problems today in class and it felt like every 5 seconds someone was misbehaving and I couldnt seem to catch a break.

I learnt that the key to sucess in kindergarten is having games and activities up your sleeve to break up the day, it just takes the edge off always having to speak to someone about something they have done..

Describe: So today in handwriting lesson, I felt underprepared I think, I hadent actually done a handwriting lesson before and so really should have practiced my language with the kids first, i.e letter formation, how we write our letters. We sang the nursery Rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep, I used picture cue cards with the students to sing the nursery rhyme. We then mixed up the cue cards and I asked students to sequence them in the correct order. I then went through the first word with the students on the board. We talked about punctuation, grammatical features, Question marks. Students wrote the sentence and then drew a picture.

Analyse: The first part of the lesson went well, the students were engaged in the nursery rhyme. However when it came to the handwriting part I moved to quickly for the students on the board, I modelled the first 2 words for them and then rewrote the rest of the sentence too quickly. I should have gone through in more depth the features of each letter, got the studnets to copy and then put their pens down. The other big thing that I noticed was that I waited until everyone had finished their sentence before I started going around and marking, this took a long time and then the class was going wild because some students had finished and I hadent planned any activities to do.

Plan: When it comes to kindergarten, its worth spending the extra time just making things really plain and simple, being explicit in instructions. Its time consuming but the more repetiton they have the more they understand. I think sometimes I forget how to think like a kindergartener and rush through things too quickly assuming they understand what im saying. I dont really give them much of a chance to explore ideas.

Trick is to always have half the class moving, seperating it makes less noise and chatter and distracted students. Next time I should mark half the class and then when they have finished put their books away and do a hands on activitiy on the floor, i.e letter tile words etc while the other group gets their work marked. Then read the story at the end to bring them back together.

Behaviour Management, the most tricky concept to get your head around with kindergarten. And even though they are little people they pick up on everything, like not following through with consequences, not being firm enough etc.. I need to work on being more firm with the kids and setting achievable consequences but following with a positive.

Learning so much as I go..