I had the kids today all tugging at my heels saying "Miss Stevenson, When is it going to be my turn to be King/ Queen of the day, didnt you see me being so good today?..." I remember what it was like in school when your just being so good all the time and feel like no one notices and rewards you for it.and having to wait a WHOLE day is such a long time in kindergarten. I pointed out to the children that just because you didnt get King or Queen of the day doesnt mean I wasent watching you today and that I didnt see how good you were behaving, it simply means that you have to be patient and we cant have a whole class of kings and queens everyone will get a turn but you have to be patient.
Monday Monday Monday.. Bon jovi sure got it right in " I dont like Mondays"
Ever get that feeling like as you just get busy moving along, suddenly you surprise yourself at how easy it becomes, the things that used to stress you out seem to come naturally. Today I sat there and really just felt like beaming, I think once you get those creative juices flowing, its just a natural progression
Describe:
It should almost be illegal for maths on a monday, and on a friday.. but there we had it smack bang in the middle of the day was monday morning maths. Im teaching the kids the numbers 21-30 this week. Today the lucky number was 22, so I decided to start the lesson off by slap counting from 1-30 and then backwards, needless to say I pretty much only heard my voice on the way down. I paused at one number and heard no voices, the kids looked at me sheepishly all looking around at the others to see if anyone else knew. I then had a jar of 22 (lolly teeth) and asked the students to guess how many were in the container, just to engage them. I then tested my Smartboard skills and got the kids to play a game of guess my number touching the number they guess. (The Kids loved this, I swear anything with technology is a winner). Then I broke the class up into 5 small groups and they completed learning center activities exploring the number 22.
Station 1: Building a house using 22 matchsticks
Station 2: Cutting out 22 letters from a newspaper and making a collage
Station 3: Making the number 22 out of play-doh
Station 4: Drawing 22 kings/Queens
Station 5: Finding 22 pairs in a deck of cards.
Analyse:
- Need more practice counting backwards, Ill have to get a bit creative with that, hand slaps get a bit boring and monotonous, all learners arnt engaged all the time.
- Kids loved the lolly jar guessing game, engaged them, they remembered what number we were looking at today, simply I think because they all remembered exactly how many lollys were in the lolly jar. Its all about appealing to their interests. Lets be honest what child isnt motivated by a little sugar.
- Guess my number was a great idea in theory, however I started off getting them to guess a number between 1-30 but then the smart board was too high for them to reach so not thinking clearly I got the kids to think of a number between 1-100. Not sure what I was thinking kindergarten dont learn up to 100, So most kids switched off while others were having their turn. The kids were just simply pressing numbers on the smartboard, most of the time they didnt know what number they were pressing. Looking back on it now I should have got them to say the number they were pressing and then tell them higher or lower. Take a little extra time to work through looking at numbers higher and lower (more then/less then). I should have started off with 1-10 for this strategy and worked my way up in coming weeks.
- Learning center activities worked well, Kids all engaged, allowed for all learning styles to be met. Didnt have enough time to rotate to any other activities so will rotate when exploring the other numbers 23,24,25 etc, So kids can have a go at each learning station.
Plan:
For Next time..
- need to be realistic about the timing of activities, for example the hundreds chart game was only a warm up activitiy to get them engaged. I should have taken a little more time and used it in guided discovery phase, focussing more on the number 22. Looking at numbers more then and less then 22.
- Need to watch language with students that positive praise students for doing the right thing without degrading kids doing the wrong thing, aim is to motivate and inspire them to do the right thing not to make it impossible for them.
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