A primary focus in our room thus far this year has been building a strong classroom community. For kindergarten children this encompasses a broad range of social learning about themselves, their peers, the larger school community and how each is interrelated. This begins by learning about their own emotions to understanding the perspective of others, and to witnessing how their actions and choices affect others. All of this leads to knowing how they can contribute to the larger community in a positive manner; helping to make others feel happy and in turn feeding their own sense of joyful learning. Every moment of every school day provides an opportunity for growth as a person as well as learner. I am amazed at how much learning beyond academics occurs in our classroom and I am prepared to support every child along his/her path this year. The photos that follow, from Whole School Meeting to school expectations to learning how one's brain works, shows some of the ways young children build social skills to last a lifetime.
Whole School Meeting happens every Friday. It is a time for learning and celebrating as a school community. We meet special guests, learn about school expectations, share learning in classrooms and close the meeting with our PBIS Fuzzy Drop into our three school expectations containers. Each week the school has a goal of filling either one or two containers in order to earn a whole school celebration.
Second graders lead the pledge of allegiance at Whole School meeting. Teachers can be seen doing skits to teach a concept. Here Mr. Allbee and myself act out a common problem on the playground, using the swings, and brainstorm solutions for how to take turns. Mr. Shepherd nominates a staff member to fill the fuzzy bins. Our mysterious "B-Man" often makes an appearance to remind us to BE Safe, BE Respectful and Be Ready To Learn.
We use several "systems" for behavior including Whole Body Listening and PAX Voices/Quiet to help us with the three school expectations. In the beginning of the year, our class made a list for every expectation in every possible location of school... these lists described in "kid languague" what it meant to be safe, respectful and ready to learn in the classroom, on the bus, in the cafeteria, etc. We are returning to these lists now in the winter to make book of drawings depicting how the kids describe those three rules... showing that learning social expectations is ongoing throughout the year in kindergarten.
This class loves art projects! They not only have fun, but learn independence such as finding their materials and following the pre-taught steps to making a cut, color and glue project.
We are a fabulous group of actors! We often role play social and academic learning situations to practice concepts. There is always a group taking a turn as "actors" and an "audience/ set directors" group who announce, "Quiet on the Set! 1, 2, 3 ACTION!" Here we act out safety rules on our bus...the importance of walking and staying in our seat "bubble" area and not in the aisle.
Role playing walking in the hall for our PBIS school expectations. Wow! Look at our full bear of fuzzies our class collected in one week. Each Friday we bring this bear down to Whole School Meeting and add it to the collection bin along with other classrooms in the school.
Learning to navigate the school day, work independently and resolve conflicts or challenges are as important as academic learning. Knowing how and when to use the skills they learn for certain situations takes practice. For kindergarten children, all of this starts with being comfortable in one's classroom, knowing how it is organized and where to find what they need independently. There are lables and routines... just to name a few....scissors to use for opening their own snacks, a drying rack for art, waiting spots on the floor for sink and water fountain lines, a cup for pencils to be sharpened after school, cubbies to store works in progress and ways to keep our bathroom clean.
WALT: We Are Learning To. I was fortunate to have an incredible science teacher mentor in college who taught me to have a daily objective for my students and to tell them exactly what it was in the beginning and end of every lesson. In telling children what the learning intention is, they can begin to focus their thinking around a specific learning strategy... one they can access when they practice a skill. Each day I write a "WALT" statement on a set of wipe off sentence strips either before, during or even after a lesson to remind students of what they are learning to do. You will see many WALT statements in photos this year.
We have student jobs each day such as counting the number of days we come to school, weather, and calendar. As we near the 100th day of school these routines become even more important as we gather weather data and count in different ways.
Learning to name and recognize feelings formed the foundation of our learning about Conflict Resolution. We used the book David Goes to School as a resource to understanding perspective taking... how our actions effect others and their feelings.
Feeling Puppets and the Problem Puppets helped us to brainstorm Win-Win Solutions when a conflict arises.
Learning about and how to use our brain to make wise choices is a life-long skill. Using the Mind-Up Curriculum we learning to focus our thinking, calm our bodies and thoughts, activate our prefrontal cortex (PFC) to make decisions that help us and our classroom community.
Here we learned that we have the power to open the pathway of messages that flow through our amygdala to our PFC.... we can choose to be closed and tight in conflicts/choices (I don't like any orange foods; I am angry at...) or we can use techniques to calm our amygdala, open the flow messages to the PFC which we use to make a good choices (well I could try that new orange food; I am feeling angry but I can take a deep breath to calm down instead of using unkind words or actions). We will use Mind-Up Lessons all year and build our community poster with strategies from each lesson.
Learning to navigate the school day, work independently and resolve conflicts or challenges are as important as academic learning. Knowing how and when to use the skills they learn for certain situations takes practice all year.
