Nearing the End of my days in Kindergarten

What a pleasure it has been working in the Kindergarten class of Alison Bennett. I have grown to love this class and am sad that my time in their is over. What I have learned in my time in the classroom with this grade is the value of a relationship with your students. Caring about what a student is passionate about, or how they connect in the classroom is important to learn early on. Mrs. Bennett showed me how to really connect with the students, and in the end I really started to feel like a teacher. I was really nervous in the beginning about if the students would like me or not. I didn't go to the class every single day, but when I did come, they were always excited that I was there to help out with class. That felt really good to me that they anticipated me coming to class, and were overjoyed when I was there.
I have made a list of goals of what I want to strive to accomplish during the next 2 years as I enter the program this fall. The kind of teacher I want to be perceived as, what accomplishments I want to make for myself as a student, and gain a sense that I am a new teacher. Testing strategies, classroom management, and what it means to be a teacher, are all fresh on my mind as I enter my cohort and I am making it a goal to never lose that mindset of what it is like to be in a classroom. Mrs. Bennett really helped me learn in her classroom with all of the different ways a teacher can go through a lesson or activity. We sat in the other kindergarten classrooms some days when the students had joint activities. I learned that every teacher is different, and how they run their classrooms is completely their style. I looked forward to certain teachers when I was in grade school, and I have made it a goal, to try and be one of those teachers that students get excited about.
I have learned so much in this class and saved so many power points and lessons. I can't wait to see what it is like, when I have a classroom of my own.

School "Rules"

Helping out in the classroom and learning classroom procedures that Mrs. Bennett enforces with her students. Some of them are basic school rules concerning hallway etiquette and library. When the students don't bring back one of their books, they cannot check out a new one. The students always get excited to get a new book they can pick out themselves. It is part of the school curriculum to read grade level books, so the kids are learning and growing with books they decide to read. When they don't follow the rules to bring their books back however, they don't get to pick out a new book, so then they are motivated to always bring them back.
One of the procedures I love that Mrs. Bennett uses in her classroom is something I refer to as "quiet as a mouse". She has a little mason jar candy dispenser that is filled with skittles, and there are two wooden mice on a lever at the bottom. When we all sit at the carpet, or it is time to be quiet and listen to instructions, she will pick a student and say "(Students Name) is being quiet as a mouse".  When she says this, the appropriate student knows that they get to go over to her desk, and move the lever over once, which will dispense a couple skittles. When I saw how the kids reacted with this procedure in the classroom, I started looking up little contraptions like this because I want to do something like this with my future students as well! When classroom procedures are implemented, it builds a great flow in the teacher, and the students gain a lot more respect for school. It has gotten me thinking a lot about the kind of impact I want to make as a teacher, and brainstorming procedures of my own.

Active Engagement in the Classroom

Active Engagement in a classroom I have come to learn is a very important thing. Mrs. Bennett in our classroom does several hands on activities, and has the kids working together on many different occasions. Still one of my favorite things in her classroom, is our class mail box. I may have mentioned this before, but it is only because it is my favorite thing we do as a class. The students each write 1 letter each week to another student in the class. They put the letter in the mail box, and we hand out the letters at the end of the week. They have to write to each student at least, once, so everyone gets a letter from every student in the class by the end of the school year. This is a way for the kids to be engaged with their classmates, and make friends.
In our classroom, we do a warm up and cool down song/dance/interactive video that we do together every once in a while with the students. It is such a fun activity and we have a great time doing it together. Within the first few weeks, the kids knew all of the words to the songs, and had memorized the moves. It is an easy and simple way to have a fun interaction with your students, and helps to wake up their brains when they come to school. It is a nice cool down before we send them home, and makes our class very calm before we leave. Singing a song, learning a new nursery rhyme or fable with puppets, these are both very great ways that we have interacted with our class. It helps engage the student in the lesson, and they always seem to remember it better, if we make it something memorable to them.

How important are teachers?

During my time in the classroom, I have learned so much that goes into being a teacher. The respect I have gained is bounds beyond what I thought I would take away from the class. I think the teacher makes an important role in a students life, because they are bringing new information to the student. The teacher is the person they spend most of their day with, they see them every single day shortly after they wake up, and they are basically staring at them for the majority of the time they are in class. My graphic organizer allowed me to see the variety of roles that a teacher has. I didn't think there was one role that was more important than the other for particular reasons. They all make an impact on the students and you can grow together as a class.

Considering the Roles I found to stand out, I will define those specifically. Being a friend to the students is important, because in return you gain the roles as a confident with them as well. They trust you, and are not afraid to come to you for anything, and look forward to coming to class. The term "cheerleader" is something that I know was important to me when I was in grade school. It showed me that my teacher cared about me in and out of the classroom. Attending my students school plays, dance performances, choir/band/orchestra concerts, that will be a priority to me. I have a long road ahead of me and making sure every role as a teacher, is every way that I can be defined as a teacher by everyone around me.

Who likes taking tests?

While helping teach with Kindergarten, I never really seemed to notice assessment strategies until this unit in our class. Thinking of the Summative, Formative, and Authentic assessments, I see several different methods of authentic assessments in our classroom. I never really thought that the book reports, journal entries, or projects were a form of assessment, but it is a very smart method. In our classroom we have been working on letters, and small, simple words. A form of assessment we have used in our classroom is our classroom mailbox. Every week when we work on new words, we have the students write a letter once a week to another student in our class, and put them in a mailbox in our classroom. In a way, this is Authentic and Formative, because it is a creative form of testing, but it is also continuous throughout the school year.
When I was in grade school, the assessments that worked best for me were the ones that I looked forward to working on. Having a creative poster, diorama, video/short film, or even filling a basket full of representative/symbolic items. These can be the most fun assignments for the students, because they get to put their own creative spin on their assessment project. I have testing anxiety whenever I have an exam, and forget what I am doing once the packet is in front of me. I know I am not alone in this, so when there are authentic assessments like these that are given, I am excited to show what I have learned. This is what I want in my own classroom, I don't want students scared for exams, or boring projects, I want my students excited to show what we learned together.

IDEA: Students with Disabilities.

This is a topic that I have a great deal of passion about. I have seen IDEA in action in the schools I have done my hours for pertaining not only to this class, but in many other classrooms I have interned in for the past 2 years. In my classroom right now, it is kind of hard to see specific learning disabilities with children that are so young. My kindergarten class is wonderful and I love all the students in it. The parents had to fill out a substantial amount of paperwork when they registered their student for school, and had to have a meeting or two with the classroom teacher, and what the school calls the "Skill Building" instructor. They help devise a plan for their childs/students learning to best suit their needs. There are 3 students in my class who have a hard time in the classroom, and 2 or 3 times per week they will go with the skill building instructor to another room in the school, and work on things that they may be falling behind in.
For example, we were working on spelling certain focus words about a week ago, and once we looked over the students worksheets they turned in, Mrs. Bennett made a few notes concerning those students that have been having a hard time with spelling, and reading, to give those notes to the skills lab. I thought it was such a smart idea to not waste any time to work with these students. The next day, 2 of those students were taken to skills lab to work on those words, and a few other things they had been working hard with. I have a lot of sympathy for learning disabilities because my own little brother has one. He was born premature and so his cognitive and mental skills have developed slower than a lot of the other kids his age. He had a hard time learning how to walk, and speaking came a little later, and even now kids his age are wrestling with each other and being rough, and he still has a little skip when he runs. He is such a smart kid, and when I was considering going into elementary education, my parents encouraged me to help him at home, and I couldn't be happier I did. He has taught me so much, and so have the students in my classroom. Not everyone is at a runners pace, or even a brisk jog, some students are just walking along and doing it one step at a time.  IDEA is such an amazing principle, and I don't think we would have created the education system for these students without it.

My little brother Fischer catching drops of rain in Hawaii

Diversity in the Classroom

The best opportunities that I have had so far in the classroom, have been when I am working with small groups of students. One of the assignments that we did was drawing a picture of what their family did on the past weekend. When asking the students in each group what they did on the weekend, it was really cool to see how different they all were. In our class we have all kinds of different nationalities. We have a young boy who is from Mexico, a few colored students, and a young girl who's parents are from Korea. These students do the same work in the classroom, and it has been a privilege to see them interact, and become friends. 

When looking over the student's drawings after class, everyone had such different activities over the weekend. There were traditional clothes depicted in some of the drawings, maybe like a festival or something they must have attended. Students drew different types of food, places, and people. It was cool to see the different cultures and diversity when looking through the artwork. 

These students really don't have any sense of racial judgement yet, but they are also very blunt with their questions. "Why is your skin that color?" is a question I heard the other day, and the student just responded that is how they were born. The student asking the question just replied "That is so cool!" This is the kind of interaction that I love seeing in the classroom. 

Mrs. Bennett's Afternoon Kindergarten 2016-2017 (100 Second Staring Contest)

"Hello, I am Mrs. Olsen and I will be helping Mrs. Bennett in her classroom for a little while". I loved introducing myself to these kids.  I was amazed with her students and how they have a routine in their class that they all seem to really enjoy, which is classroom jobs that they are assigned. Mrs. Bennett would ask the students whose names were on the popsicle sticks what job they would like to have, or if having a certain job would be something they would want to do. Their eyes lit up when it came time to assign jobs and it was very hard not to notice. 

Mrs. Bennett really seems to care about her students, and wants them to succeed. She of course knows every student by name, but being this far into the school year why wouldn't she. She is very kind to each student, and knows how to make them laugh and keep them entertained. She has a good relationship with every student, shy and outgoing. She asks question on how they are, how something went in their lives like an event that they probably shared with her at one time or another. It was very cool to see how much thee kids wanted her opinion, and wanted to show her when they finished an assignment, or colored a picture. There can be those students that are a little more difficult to teach, or can even sit still for more than a few minutes. She has an admirable sense of humor and can just laugh off some of the things that are done or said and continue on. I did not have such luck because I found myself laughing several times throughout the day! What can I say, they are such a lively class! If I was back in Kindergarten again, I definitely would want to be in a class exactly like this!

Mrs. Bennett has a well constructed day set up for these Kindergartners, and there are tools that I would love to apply to my own classroom. The children each have a table designated by a color that corresponds to a rainbow squared carpet laying across the floor. They start of their day with their learning basics...What is the weather like? What is today? So then what did that make yesterday? and what does that make tomorrow? 

The children walked into the classroom that afternoon and they know exactly where to go once they get to school. They walk over and put their folders into a basket, they hang up their backpacks and coats, then they proceed to their tables to work on whatever assignment or project may be waiting for them. Mrs. Bennett is very organized and has a good relationship with her students. Their classroom feels like a team, they all work together to make a productive and fun day. There is never a dull moment with these kids, and there is always something that wants to be talked about, or needs to be shared. 
Mrs. Bennett is the aunt of my husband and I have shadowed and helped with her classroom in the past to understand if teaching was something I really wanted to do. Watching these kids develop has been such an amazing opportunity, and in the last week and doing final testing, they have dramatically grown as students.