I just took on a kindergarten position, I am excited, but getting thrown in midyear is overwhelming. On top of that, I'm a first year teacher! All of my experience (subbing, para, student teaching) is with 4th-6th grade, so kindergarten is going to be a learning experience, luckily I have a great group of kiddos to help me through it! I would love some advice from those who are much more experienced than me for my reading and math blocks. How would you structure a 90 minute reading block with kindergarteners? The previous teacher had them work in small groups (5 or 6 students per group.) The groups were the same students they sat with all day, and they were grouped by ability. While I realize it's easier to differentiate when they're grouped by ability, I have always preferred flexible grouping, so the higher students could help the lower students when they weren't sure how to do something, I've also found it helps with behavior problems. I would also prefer only 2-3 students per group, but like I said, my experience is with older students, so I would love input on this! I would also love suggestions for activities they could do at each station. I plan to keep the same stations for about a month, but I will probably change out one of the stations each week to focus on the specific skill we are working on. Again, I'm open to any suggestions you may have! Also, the principal has made it very clear he doesn't want them working on writing activities during the reading block (they have a separate hour-long writing block.) Our math block is one hour, it's the last hour of the day and the kids are always much more talkative and impatient by this time, so I would love suggestions on how to structure this hour to make it engaging and instructional. I forgot to mention, this is full day kindergarten!
I also forgot to mention that my school doesn't have a set curriculum We have a pacing guide that shows what we should be teaching each week but no corresponding curriculum.
Welcome @Elizabeth09! When I was teaching K, I preferred flexible groups too. The group that met with me for guided reading (or word work, alphabet practice, etc. for pre-readers) was the only one that was grouped by ability. The reading block is usually 45 min to an hour of literacy centers/small group instruction, so the other 30-45 min would be shared reading, read alouds and whole group activities. Here are some great kindergarten sites where you may find some ideas: Differentiated Kindergarten http://differentiatedkindergarten.com/setting-up-math-stations-for-a-successful-year/ http://differentiatedkindergarten.com/engaging-and-extending-skills-with/ KindergartenWorks Guided Math: http://www.kindergartenworks.com/category/guided-math/ Guided Reading: http://www.kindergartenworks.com/category/guided-reading/ Literacy Centers: http://www.kindergartenworks.com/tag/literacy-centers/
In my class I use daily five. I basically have five stations that students can choose to work in each day. I usually have 3-4 choices in each station, and allow 4 students per station. My guided reading groups are ability based. On the choice board, I have a space for teacher group, my students know when they see their group picture, I am their station for that round of rotations. Because of mandates by my district I had to change the name of some of my stations, but I still follow the guideline s of daily five as much as I can. Students have three 15 minute mini lessons and and two 15 minute rounds of stations. The last 15 minutes is used to close out the reading block with sharing what they learned or a product from their station.
Thank you so much for the replies and suggestions. I love all of the ideas and the blogs (I've spent more time than I should've checking them out! ) i can't wait to try these things with my kindergarteners!
