ELE300-Blog Post #4(revised)

Describe different ways (strategies) the teacher presents material to the students.

At this point in the school, the kindergartners are very familiar with their tasks. A lot of the lessons that students are learning fall in line with previous lessons. With that, Mrs. Simala is able to activate prior knowledge to introduce most of her new subjects. For children this young it is very important that an idea does not seem too far fetched for them to grasp.
The students will have some subjects that they have no prior knowledge of. In this instance, Mrs. Simala will put the activity up on the calendar just as she would with any other schedule. She will also tell the students that they will be doing something new later in the day. This will give the students a chance to grasp the idea of a change in their schedule.
The students are learning new things everyday; it is just the format of how they are learning that tends to stay very similar. It seems that with children this young, the more of a routine you can have means the more time for learning you can have. The students take a long time to transition from one activity to the next. When the children know what they are getting themselves into they are less hesitant and therefore get themselves ready sooner.

What type of student groupings does the teacher use? (one-on-one, pairs, small groups, whole class?)

Mrs. Simala uses all types of groups in her class. There are times when students are working with two or three other children, times when students will work on their own, and times when the whole class will be involved in a lesson.
The most common size group is about four. During team reading and writing this is the usual size of a group. This is also the size of groups for the activity called centers which I have talked about in previous posts.
While the students are given opportunities to work on their own, it is almost always encouraged that they ask their neighbors for help if needed. Some students are able to finish most of their work on their own while others will most often be found working with their neighbors.
The day usually has at least one all-class activity. Sometimes this is math, reading, or even the science lesson that I led.

What techniques are used to assess and evaluate learning? Describe any assessment technique you have observed.

There are a few main techniques that I have seen Mrs. Simala use to assess her students. There have been a lot of recent assessments going on in the class to track progress. Children take tests on just about everything they have learned so the school and parents know where they stand. There have been oral tests of word recognition, writing numbers 1-100, and many others that will show where a child’s skill set may be. These are summative assessments of the children’s knowledge.

What are you learning about this age group?

I have been working with young children for a long time, but I have still learned a lot about kindergartners in my short time at Everett School. I have learned that there is such a large gap between the students who are excelling and those who still are not getting the concepts. These children are five and six years old so there is still so much development ahead of them. I have learned that kindergarten involves so much more than kids learning their ABC’s. These children are really pushing the envelope with the types of learning they are doing. The advanced children in Mrs. Simala’s class have truly impressed me with their skills. It is crazy when you hear some of these children read aloud and talk to you because they sound so much older than their age. While the oral component will always impress me, the written components will always remind you of how young they really are.

What do students enjoy and dislike most?

It is kind of hard to answer this question because of the age group that I deal with. The students are not very open about disliking anything because they still have so much respect for their teacher. To be honest, the majority of the group seems genuinely enthusiastic about most of the activities that Mrs. Simala leads.

Do you see technology being used in the classroom?

I do not see a large amount of technology use in the classroom. There is a document camera which I actually used in my lesson. It is pretty simple but it projects anything that is out under the camera onto the projector screen. It is really convenient because no copies are needed to be made and no transparency sheets are involved.
The children do some work on computers in the library once a week where they will do activities to practice their word wall words.

In relation to the text…

I feel that these questions relate to chapters six and seven the most. When Mrs. Simala is presenting material to her students she is trying to engage them in the activities and lessons. She is often bringing up past lesson trying to get the children to remember what they have learned in the past. This is activating prior knowledge which is a very good tool for getting children engaged in a current lesson. She also has groups split into different sizes for different activities because she knows where her students learning zones are at this point. She knows that some topics will make the children a little uneasy and they will not give it their best effort. That is why they are put into groups sometimes, so they can support each other. The students are also split by ability for a few of the lesson because the students will have similar skill sets and learning zones. This maximizes potential learning and makes differentiated learning, which we have talked about in class, a little easier.