I Teach K {Day 4}

Today was the 4th and final day of I Teach K!, sad face.  I had a ton of fun this week and learned so much.  There were only 3 sessions to attend today, but both presenters were rock stars!

The first was with Crystal Radke from Kreative in Kinder about kindergarteners being authors.  I loved her steps to teaching writing.  You work on each step until most of the class has it.  I never thought to do it this way, but will definitely be trying it this year.
1. Brainstorm
2. Draw Picture/Color
  - draw with pencil, color with 5 or more colors
3. Label
4. Write a sentence
   - use one label word in your sentence; use sight words for the rest of the sentence
   - this was a "light bulb" moment for me!
5. Check for capital letter at the beginning, spaces and end punctuation

She used the "Rocket" books by Tad Hills as part of her writing instruction.  My Amazon list is growing...  I also liked that as they started writing, students write the numbers from the steps above at the top of their paper and checked them off as they completed the task to help keep them on track.  Kids made vocabulary books with cute paper covers and blank pages inside. The cute paper went with the theme, then students wrote the word and an illustration to show the meaning of the word. They could then use this as a reference in their writing.

The second and third sessions were with Mary Amoson from Sharing Kindergarten.  One session was about calendar and incorporating a variety of skills into calendar time and the other was about centers.  I got some great ideas for both times during my day.

My favorite part of the calendar time was the little games that kids can play at calendar then go revisit during center time.  Her kiddos are certainly on the ball and you can tell they love their teacher!  I like the organization (everything was VERY organized and color coded in her room) of this all about the number chart.  I might need to find some more space around my calendar area.

During centers, she had some great center organization.  I'm going to try the "have to" centers and the play-based centers.  All of my centers were "have to's" but I don't think I have to ask them to play!  If 4 students were allowed at a center, she had 4 sets of materials each in a different color (if cards or paper pieces) for easy sorting and clean up. Yes, please!  Below is a picture showing how she incorporates science and social studies into her art center.

I decided to save the Blog Meet-Up for another day (most likely tomorrow) since packing needs to happen tonight.  Such a great experience; thanks SDE for the opportunity!