Flexible Seating

One of my goals for my classroom this year was not to have assigned spots/seating for my Kindergarten students. I believe the power to choose where you sit and who you sit with helps build my students' ability to socialize, problem solve and self regulate. It is now the half-way point of the year and I could not be happier with how flexible seating and spot choice has worked in my room. This works in my classroom due to the amble space and the fact that our division provides supplies for the classroom so in our room all supplies are shared among all my students. The students know that they choose their spot and I have trust that they will choose the right spot for them or change places if it isn't working the way they thought it might. They also know I have the right to ask them to choose a new spot if they are not following classroom rules.
I am so fortunate to have two adjoining classrooms which gives us tons of working space. In the front room, there are desks clustered to act like tables and they all sit at full height with enough chairs for each table. These clusters are used for eating lunch at and doing whole group art projects and are always a seating choice. We also have a red, kidney-shaped table used for student collaboration and teacher-student small group work. In the front room, we have a reading area to listen to read-alouds or to look at books on their own. This space has a large comfy reading chair, a little bench/couch and a number of cushions and bean bag chairs. The back room has a "button carpet" from Ikea, a picnic table, two tables with their legs taken off so they can be sat on like a bench or sat around to be utilized as a table, two full height tables, a cardboard house with cushions on the bottom,a foam tile floored construction zone, a dramatic play area and a stage. These spaces are all open during playing/learning time, journaling time, time using the ipads and in the morning during center time.
Throughout the year, more spaces were made available as my students better knew how to self-regulate and which spaces worked best for them as learners. During journal time today, I was amazed by the variety of choices my class made - some chose to sit at a high table, some chose to sit in a pair in a cozy area and write on clipboards, some chose to stretch out on the floor, one chose to write at the kitchen hutch, others chose to cluster in a group of three on the stage and one chose to sit inside the cardboard house with a clipboard to write on and a desk lamp to brighten the area. Each one of them had pencils and drawing supplies nearby and took what they needed to their chosen spot. By this point in the year, there was no arguing over spaces or frustration that the space they chose hadn't been the best place for them to work.
Today I reveled in teacher pride as I looked around the room at my five and six year old students doing their best work in a way that worked for their learning style and social preference - yay K's!

M stretched out with the
pencil crayons she needed

J at the kitchen hutch 
with T and L on the floor of 
the dramatic play center 

P, A and D sharing supplies 
and writing
together on the stage 

M working independently 
at the kidney
table on a stool

L and O sharing supplies 
in the cozy reading area
with clipboards to write on

V writing on a clipboard 
in the cardboard house with
the desk lamp on for light

L using his forearms to support while
stretching out to journal

My Kindergarten Classroom ❤️

It's official, I have survived my first week and a half as a Kindergarten teacher and finally feel sane enough to reflect on how things have been going so far. I've been so fortunate to have two rooms to work with, which means plenty of space for my Kinders and I to spread out. The highlights of our classroom have definitely been our button carpet for whole group meetings (thanks Ikea!), our block/construction center and our dramatic play center which is currently a house that often functions as a grocery store as well. "Our Brightest Work" bulletin board already features September self-portraits and samples of how my students print their names. I was aiming for a bright, home-y and cheery room that didn't have too many distractions all while on a first year teacher budget.The hard work this summer definitely paid off and I love spending the day in our classrooms! In addition to being blessed with a double classroom, I am also so lucky to have a working relationship with the teacher whose maternity leave I am filling which means she graciously left all of her resources, read-aloud books, toys and manipulatives for this year's Kinders to enjoy. The before and afters of my room are not overly dramatic as it was already set up beautifully (for a K/1 classroom) but I am proud of the changes none the less!

Our front classroom before - looking in from the door (mid-moving day)

Our front classroom after 

Our front classroom before

Our front classroom after 

Classroom library before 

Classroom library after with our family wall 

Old math center... 

Turned new dramatic play center!

Play area before

Play area after - now the construction and building area with the writing center to the left and sand table in front

Back classroom after 

Back classroom after

Our science and observation station in the back classroom which is currently host to a few old wasps' nests

L

L is for Learning Through Discovery

As my co-operating teacher and I were discussing today, the best classrooms operate with a balance between student and teacher led learning. In both of OLCS's kindergarten classes, the day begins with a period of discovery. This time of the day allows the students to explore and interact while learning required curricular outcomes. 

Earlier in my practicum, we developed a number of Easter discovery activities which involved both numeracy and literacy. For this discovery, we assigned groups so that the children could rotate stations each day and give each activity a try. The senior kindergarteners found this concept easier to understand but with prompting and reminding, the junior kindergarteners would find their station and engage in their discovery. Our Easter discovery was eye catching and stimulated learning while giving us opportunities for assessment. 

Our latest discovery activities are based on colour exploration and investigation. Both the senior and junior kindergarten classes are fascinated by mixing paint, sorting coloured objects and using eye droppers to mix coloured water onto a variety of mediums such as coffee filters, napkins and baking soda using coloured vinegar. 

The next step in our colour discovery is to implement a few teacher led colour activities. It's an exciting time to be in kindergarten! 

K

K is for Kindergarten Play Plans

My journey into the world of Kindergarten has been a whirlwind of learning, discovery, play, laughter and surprises. The past four and a half weeks have absolutely flown by! We are a very busy bunch and every day I just wish we had a little more time to spend on an extra activity or stay engaged in play a little longer. For roughly an hour of each day, the kindergarteners are actively engaged in play where the students have a chance to develop their social skills and hone in on their ability to dramatize, re-enact and imagine. The popular play items right now include Lego, Barbies, trains, wedgits, water table, sand table, pirate ship, wooden blocks and animals as well as the dramatic play area which has most recently been turned into a school complete with pointers and teacher dresses. This suggestion came from one of our junior kinder students and with the help of the whole class, we transformed the dramatic play space into a school space.

Early in my practicum, my co-operating teacher and I discussed the idea of using play plans to help students to engage more deeply in their play and plan for success (you need to check our her blog and her perspective on play plans too!)We have been using our play plans since mid-March and overall it has created a much more focused and deliberate play. The boys and girls often choose to sustain their play longer at one activity as opposed to bouncing between many activities for a short period of time. Using the play plans has also opened up opportunity to utilize a word wall with all of the play options and students' names printed. We encourage students to illustrate and write their play plans. Some of the senior kindergarten students are ready to utilize simple sentences for their plans such as "I am going to play __________ with __________." or "I want to play __________ with ________". Other students are illustrating their play plans and captioning them with the activity they chose as well as the names of the other students they planned to play with.

Most recently, thanks to a look at the early childhood education curriculum document from New Zealand, we have added a reflection piece for the students to complete after their play has finished. They have a choice of circling four different faces indicating whether play was fantastic, so-so, sad or really upsetting. After they circle their choice, they conference with myself or my co-operating teacher to briefly explain the reason behind their choice and tell us a little bit about how their play went that day.

Every so often, students ask to change their play plan mid-way through play. Frequently this is because they chose to be at an activity alone and as they watch their peers playing together, they wish to change their destination of play. We allow this and explain that it is okay to change your mind but then they must also change their play plan to indicate their new activity.

Overall, I am amazed by the way that the play plans help children focus their play as well as consider who they might play with. In deciding who and what to play, they practice asking their friends questions such as "Would you like to play Barbies with me?" or "What would you like to play today?" They also practice answering appropriately, for example, saying "no thank-you" if they do not wish to join in on that activity that day or "yes please!" if they agree with the choice of activity. The play plans are also an excellent literacy activity that allowed us to scaffold their learning by beginning by encouraging illustrations, then modelling captioning our pictures using the word wall or asking a classmate to help spell their name then further highlighting the idea of using a sentence to express their play plan. Many of the students are totally enthralled by the idea of play planning and often walk into the classroom in the morning and announce that they already know what they are planning to do for play or tell us that they are excited to do play plans. The play plans still allow for choice of play but are a tool to help the students collect their thoughts and have a plan to follow if they begin to lose focus or decrease their level of engagement.

Play planning has been an excellent new routine in the classroom and I cannot wait to use it again should I ever find myself to be so lucky to be in Kindergarten once again!

Next up is a foray into self-regulated snack with the junior kindergarteners on Friday - wish me luck!

J

J is for Jumping for Joy!

J also happens to be for Junior Kindergarten (the half-day, every other day program for four-year-olds), Jack and The Beanstock (we're working through a unit on fairy tales) and Jewellery (the Kinders are highly observant and always notice if their teachers are wearing rings, earrings or necklaces).

Student teaching has finally arrived and the first two weeks have flown by! I've taken the plunge into the land of Kindergarten and fallen in love with all of it - all the busyness, all the questions, all the discovery and all the learning that happens every minute of every day. It helps that I have a marvellous co-operating teacher who goes by the name of Devon Caldwell and just so happens to be the author of the blog Kindergarten Diva. We have two Kindergarten classes at OLCS - the JKs who are four and the SKs who are five and come every other day, all day.

So far both classes have been working on fairy tales which included making graphs on whether or not we'd kiss a frog if it would turn into a prince (most kids answered yes they would!), deciding on criteria of what makes a fairy tale and reading different versions of fairy tales. To work on our 2D shapes outcome, each student built a castle using construction paper shapes. As a group, we cut out all of the shapes and talked about the properties of each one.As an assessment tool, I interviewed each child and asked them how many triangles, rectangles, squares and circles they had used to build their castle. I was very impressed with their creativity and knowledge of 2D shapes!

We also built a castle to work on our 3D shapes outcome. This was a really fun project! We started by watching a Brain Pop video about 3D shapes and then we sorted all our recycled materials that used to belong to the class store into two categories: rectangular prisms and cylinders. Each student then had a chance to choose a piece to add to the castle. This was our end result which we were all very proud of!

I

I is for Introductions

We learn from introductions whether it is being introduced to a new person, introduced to a new concept or introduced to a new outlook on the world. My time so far in the Faculty of Education has included many introductions and starting March 9th, I will be introduced to the way that my next co-operating teacher, Devon Caldwell, runs her classroom and I couldn't be more excited! The projects and topics that the Kindergartners from Oak Lake cover under her direction are amazing and I just know I will learn SO much. Reading her blog, I better understand the idea of blogging as a teacher to share ideas with parents, to reflect on how things are going in your classroom and to inspire those who are following in your footsteps. I truly hope I can keep up with my blog and introduce other teachers to my way of thinking and my way of teaching.

H

H is for Homework

At the end of January, I moved into a new house and after numerous visits from MTS and a few complications, we finally got internet on Friday which made for over three long weeks without internet access at home. In a world where so much of our school work is technology based, it made for a lot of trips to the library and mooching of friend's internet. My three week gap from internet at home made me realize how difficult it must be for student's whose parents can't afford internet or live in rural/remote areas with limited internet access. When so much of our homework is based on using online sources, not having internet at home made homework that one extra step harder.

Obviously I made a point to get it done and drove or walked to the library but students might not be able to do that. These past three weeks just reminded me to be aware of the home life of my future students. How many have access to internet at home is going to affect the homework I give and the communication tools I use. Having our internet back made me so grateful that I am privileged enough to have this online access and live in an area where this is an option.