This is currently my fourth year teaching at Avalon Elementary School in Naples, Florida. I taught two years of second grade, and this is now my second year of kindergarten. As I look back on how I have felt at the beginning (and sometimes at the end) of the year, I feel that this is the most confident that I have been at any point in my teaching career. My confidence as an educator is really strengthening. This year, I have a wonderful class of students and I feel that we are going to accomplish great things. I am looking forward to taking some risks and trying new strategies and activities with this group of students.
My school ranges from Pre-Kindergarten to Fifth Grade. Currently there are 518 students. There are 264 male students and 254 female students. 11% are ESE and 2.9% are gifted. 93.05% of students are considered economically needy. 31.08% of students come from homes that speak English at home, 59.46% of students speak Spanish at home, and 8.88% of students speak Creole. 92 students are white, 66 are Black, 349 are Hispanic, 3 are Asian, 6 are Multiracial, 1 is Hawaiian, and 1 is Indian.
My students are a very diverse group. Out of my 17 students, 12 are female and 5 are male. I had 7 boys at the beginning of the year and 3 have recently moved. 10 are Hispanic, 3 are Haitian, 3 are white, and 1 is Multiracial. The majority of the class is bilingual. In years past, I have had a large portion of the class that did not primarily use English. This year, most can speak at least a little and many have attended some sort of pre-school program prior to coming to Kindergarten. In my opinion, preschool has helped tremendously because these students come here ready to learn. Other demographics, beside gender and race. 80% of my students are on free and reduced lunch. At this age students are not labeled at being gifted of having a learning disability. As a Kindergarten teacher, I collect a lot of data so that they can be tested before first grade. Of course, I differentiate in order to meet the needs of all of my students.
I am very passionate about teaching. I use a variety of texts to make reading exciting. I mix up the format of my students are reading to expose them to different styles. I utilize poetry, songs, fiction, non-fiction, and anything else my students are interested. I am quick to acquire books that my students specifically request.
On a typical day in my classroom, students are able to interact with text in multiple ways. We begin in the morning with songs and small group intervention. As a whole group, we do phonemic awareness, rhyming, breaking words into syllables, letter sounds, and sight words. Then I work with needier students in small groups on the basic skills of reading. Other students are working based on their needs. When my students came to towards the end of August, they had virtually no reading skills, and we are laying a framework for them to be successful this year and for years to come.
We do a shared reading activity daily. I start with a poem, often nursery rhymes. Then we do a reading that is challenging for my students. I read to them, modeling what good readers do as I go along. I stop to ask questions and have students respond. This is a way for me to assess comprehension. Usually I have them pair up and do a Kagan strategy http://www.kaganonline.com/index.php where they can talk to each other about the story. As they do this, I walk around and teach them how to talk about the story. While doing this read aloud, I am modeling our over-arching strategy of close reading.
While reading, students have to support all answers with reasons how they know by going back into text. They are still refining the skill, but they use the basic premise. At this point in the year, I am more modeling the strategy, but I am doing this so that when they are developmentally ready they will know what to do when they have their own text in front of them. EVERY DAY, I try to have students respond to the text. I post a question and model a possible answer, and then attempt to write a complete sentence and then retell what they wrote to me.
I also do guided reading every day. Groups are set up according to levels based on comprehension skills as well as how many letters and sight words they know. Some students may have lots of letters, sounds, etc., but they can be in a lower group because they lack comprehension skills. I try to focus on a specific skill with each group. At this point in the year, stories are short and we are building skills of using the pictures to analyze the story, and working on skills like tracking. When the story is done, we work on skills like letter recognition, etc. Students take the book home that we read in guided reading to practice fluency with parents. Many of the parents speak Spanish at home but are still very involved in homework. The book that students take home is the same book that was read in the Guided Reading Group. This means that they are familiar with the words. Most of the books are repetitive. I encourage families to ask their children questions about the book in Spanish or Creole. This has really helped.
Other content areas are an opportunity for me to work on reading as well. During science and social studies, we encounter a lot of vocabulary words. I use images on-line and bring in hands on examples to help them make connections with the word meaning. Next week, we are working on textures, and I will bring in a variety of surfaces to help them understand the point.
I have a very text rich environment. I have a classroom library with approximately 800 books. We also have a school library that we try to visit every 2 weeks. During our visit, the librarian reads a story. We recently started to allow students to check out books but we haven’t let them take them home. I hope to allow students to take their books home soon. I have really been able to instill in my students this year a love of reading, and it is invigorating to me as well. My students have an opportunity to get books that are donated through the RIF program and they love that as well. My students are well on their way to become readers.
My school ranges from Pre-Kindergarten to Fifth Grade. Currently there are 518 students. There are 264 male students and 254 female students. 11% are ESE and 2.9% are gifted. 93.05% of students are considered economically needy. 31.08% of students come from homes that speak English at home, 59.46% of students speak Spanish at home, and 8.88% of students speak Creole. 92 students are white, 66 are Black, 349 are Hispanic, 3 are Asian, 6 are Multiracial, 1 is Hawaiian, and 1 is Indian.
My students are a very diverse group. Out of my 17 students, 12 are female and 5 are male. I had 7 boys at the beginning of the year and 3 have recently moved. 10 are Hispanic, 3 are Haitian, 3 are white, and 1 is Multiracial. The majority of the class is bilingual. In years past, I have had a large portion of the class that did not primarily use English. This year, most can speak at least a little and many have attended some sort of pre-school program prior to coming to Kindergarten. In my opinion, preschool has helped tremendously because these students come here ready to learn. Other demographics, beside gender and race. 80% of my students are on free and reduced lunch. At this age students are not labeled at being gifted of having a learning disability. As a Kindergarten teacher, I collect a lot of data so that they can be tested before first grade. Of course, I differentiate in order to meet the needs of all of my students.
I am very passionate about teaching. I use a variety of texts to make reading exciting. I mix up the format of my students are reading to expose them to different styles. I utilize poetry, songs, fiction, non-fiction, and anything else my students are interested. I am quick to acquire books that my students specifically request.
On a typical day in my classroom, students are able to interact with text in multiple ways. We begin in the morning with songs and small group intervention. As a whole group, we do phonemic awareness, rhyming, breaking words into syllables, letter sounds, and sight words. Then I work with needier students in small groups on the basic skills of reading. Other students are working based on their needs. When my students came to towards the end of August, they had virtually no reading skills, and we are laying a framework for them to be successful this year and for years to come.
We do a shared reading activity daily. I start with a poem, often nursery rhymes. Then we do a reading that is challenging for my students. I read to them, modeling what good readers do as I go along. I stop to ask questions and have students respond. This is a way for me to assess comprehension. Usually I have them pair up and do a Kagan strategy http://www.kaganonline.com/index.php where they can talk to each other about the story. As they do this, I walk around and teach them how to talk about the story. While doing this read aloud, I am modeling our over-arching strategy of close reading.
While reading, students have to support all answers with reasons how they know by going back into text. They are still refining the skill, but they use the basic premise. At this point in the year, I am more modeling the strategy, but I am doing this so that when they are developmentally ready they will know what to do when they have their own text in front of them. EVERY DAY, I try to have students respond to the text. I post a question and model a possible answer, and then attempt to write a complete sentence and then retell what they wrote to me.
I also do guided reading every day. Groups are set up according to levels based on comprehension skills as well as how many letters and sight words they know. Some students may have lots of letters, sounds, etc., but they can be in a lower group because they lack comprehension skills. I try to focus on a specific skill with each group. At this point in the year, stories are short and we are building skills of using the pictures to analyze the story, and working on skills like tracking. When the story is done, we work on skills like letter recognition, etc. Students take the book home that we read in guided reading to practice fluency with parents. Many of the parents speak Spanish at home but are still very involved in homework. The book that students take home is the same book that was read in the Guided Reading Group. This means that they are familiar with the words. Most of the books are repetitive. I encourage families to ask their children questions about the book in Spanish or Creole. This has really helped.
Other content areas are an opportunity for me to work on reading as well. During science and social studies, we encounter a lot of vocabulary words. I use images on-line and bring in hands on examples to help them make connections with the word meaning. Next week, we are working on textures, and I will bring in a variety of surfaces to help them understand the point.
I have a very text rich environment. I have a classroom library with approximately 800 books. We also have a school library that we try to visit every 2 weeks. During our visit, the librarian reads a story. We recently started to allow students to check out books but we haven’t let them take them home. I hope to allow students to take their books home soon. I have really been able to instill in my students this year a love of reading, and it is invigorating to me as well. My students have an opportunity to get books that are donated through the RIF program and they love that as well. My students are well on their way to become readers.