New Year, Old Me!

Well I have one year of kindergarten under my belt now and I'm feeling a little more relaxed and comfortable in this grade! I can't wait to meet my new students tomorrow and begin the learning process all over again! When planning for the first week/couple of months, I had forgotten where all of the kindergarteners start out! It's amazing how much they grow throughout one year and all I can think about is where we ended the year...amazing readers, mathematicians, and so much more mature! As we start out this school year, we will be working on a letter of the alphabet per day (learning the sound, what it looks like, and how to write it). To go along with that, I am going to zone in immediately on sight words also! This is something I want to push the students toward right from the beginning! I am also going to go about introducing my centers a little differently this year. Instead of introducing several in a day and expecting the kids to be successful, I am going to try introducing one center per day. We will go over what the center should look like, the materials that will be used, what things we can do at the centers (including making an "I Can..." chart), and what skill(s) we should be practicing at the center. Each day I will add a center and we will practice them and along with that we should become more on-task with what we are doing during center time! During Writer's Workshop, last year I hopped right in teaching lessons. This year, I am going to start more with drawing with a purpose and showing details! Math was such an exciting time last year with the various parts - Calendar, Math in Focus lessons, and our math center time. I was told several times by students that their favorite part last year was math centers so I can't wait to delve right in and get started! With Science last year, I was really glad that I jumped right in with the program because it was really interesting and it definitely fit our kindergarten terminology and it was geared towards the students with making it very interesting and exciting! I am really excited to use more of the technology that goes along with the program this year! I'll try to keep you up to date about our National Geographic curriculum! Social Studies will still remain a little tricky because I still don't have all of the Big Books to go along with the program, but my colleagues have been AMAZING with loaning whatever I need! (I also can't wait to do our "All About ME" unit and learn more about the students!) This year's schedule is SO AWESOME! All of our grade level's specials were scheduled in the afternoon which will provide consistency in our classrooms and allow a common collaboration time (PLC time - see below)! This past week I attended a PLC (Professional Learning Community) conference. It was very encouraging to see that our Kindergarten Team was on the right track with taking ownership of all of the students, realizing that we are working on each student in our school rather than just the ones in our classroom! One thing I want to work more with this year, is focusing on intervention time. I think that if our entire team works together and separates the students into groups based off of their needs in various standards = our students will be so successful in their learning! Along with teaching this year, I will be co-coaching our elementary volleyball team and I am very excited to get started with that! I think that's all of the updates I can think of so far, but I made it my goal this year to get on and write more every month - hopefully I stick with it!