Jen's Notebook

One of my goals this year has been to work with my kindergarteners on understanding their goals and when they have achieved those goals. It has been a very interesting process. I  started by telling them what their CCSS goals were each time we started a lesson throughout the school year so far and they are starting to understand a lot of the reasons they are learning what they are learning. Wow!! Step one is going well. Step two was to communicate their goals to them and with them. So, I made goal sheets and have been discussing this with them from the second week of school during individual assessment time each week. Step two is going fairly well. Step three was to post their goals on the board daily. OK! That goal didn’t go quite as well. It was to over whelming for both the kids and myself. So I now post the most important goals for the week! Step three is going fine! Step four was to post the goals they have met in the classroom. ( This wonderful idea came from my teaching partner Natalie! She is awesome!!!) We made up goals sheets in student friendly language or the  I Can statements for each goal we were asking them to accomplish! Then we posted the goals for a quarter at a time. At the end of the quarter the goal sheets are moved out into the hallway for everyone to see. The greatest part of all of this has been what happened as each child met a goal for their kindergarten year. As they meet a goal, we take their picture and put it on that goal sheet (first hanging in the classroom and then in the hallway). We have them stand up in class and everyone claps for them as they make each goal (this only takes a few moments a couple of times a week). And the students love it. They talk about their goals all the time. They can’t wait to get up on a goal sheet, they bring their parents down to the classroom or hallway to show them their picture on the goal, and they are understanding what it means to accomplish something and be proud of their work at school on a whole new level. This idea has been a huge hit with both the students and myself. And our principal loves it too!!!Here is a picture of the hallway display I took around November of this school year. Their are a lot more goals posted now!!! 🙂  Here are the I can statements from Kindergarten CCSS that we made to use as goals for this school year. look at me

Math! Math! Math!!! My district is one of the many districts in our country this year that decided we should jump into teaching all of the CCSS’s! Yet they also chose not to provide us with any curriculum! Yikes!!! We were told that the CCSS is our curriculum. So I, as well as the entire staff of my district, have been scrambling trying to find great ideas to teach math while also trying to still use the manipulatives and other resources that were provided to us earlier in our employment. I have been trying to find anything else I could that would match with the standards, and be developmentally appropriate for my Kindergarteners. I am overwhelmed at the amount of work this has taken us, yet my colleagues and I have taken it on as we were asked too and tried our best to get our students all the resources we could find while still trying to smile. With that said, we have found some really awesome websites to use in our quest to match all the standards to activities and lessons.  The following websites are a few of my favorites. I hope they will help you with your quest to teach the CCSS’s in your classroom also.

http://www.k-5mathteachingresources.com/

https://gradekcommoncoremath.wikispaces.hcpss.org/Kindergarten+Home

http://www.engageny.org/

http://www.mathwire.com/index.html

Lions & Lambs

It’s hard to believe March 1st in already here. That means my students only have 13 weeks left in kindergarten. The year has flown by.  Now comes the big push to see how much we can get done before the end of the school year!  On a lighter note, yesterday in art we made one of my favorite projects. Lions and lambs. Here are a couple of pictures of the bulletin board we made with them. Happy March!!!