February 25-Release Day

I was once again in my kindergarten classroom! Unlike my release day in January, today I taught the first half of the day, which includes calendar and our literacy block. I have to admit that I completely felt out of the routine of teaching during the morning. There were some changes that had been made to the morning routine that I was not aware of, such as the Question of the Day chart. And I kept forgetting parts of calendar time (of which the kids quickly reminded me). I managed to fumble my way through, but felt badly for my students because of my unfamiliarity with the routine. Before I started teaching, I should have asked Mrs. VanHorn about any changes that had been made to the routine and about the new skills she was working on with the students. That way, I might have been able to provide better instruction.

The lesson I taught during Reading Workshop was a complete disaster. The students had spent time researching different animals in which they were interested. With today’s lesson, they were supposed to write an opinion statement about their animal (i.e. I think penguins are cute because they slide on their bellies). After explaining the task multiple times and even providing example sentences, the students still did not understand what they were supposed to do. I became frustrated and, unfortunately, gave up on the lesson. If I could do the lesson again, I think I would have simplified the task and just asked the students to state why they liked the animal they researched (i.e. I like penguins because they’re cute). I think they would have been better able to understand the directions in that fashion because they were used to writing sentences starting with “I like”. In the end, I regret giving up on the lesson because it was not fair to the students.