Student Teaching Week 11

This week a little hectic, because Valley only had school for 3 days. On Monday, I read the new story called Animal Babies in the Grasslands. The book focused on the different names for child animals compared to what their mother's are called. The students seemed to really enjoy the book, compared to how they sometimes react to books included in the basal curriculum. I introduced three new sight words, and the students were already pretty familiar with them because of the daily news report done at the end of the day. We, my, and like are used a lot in kindergarten, so most of the the students didn't have a lot of trouble picking up the new words. On Tuesdays, I taught the initial sound /p/. The students liked making the noise with their mouths, and did not have much trouble with recognizing what letter the sound matched up with. Since it is fall, I decided to plan most of my activities for the rest of the week around a pumpkin theme, since "P is for Pumpkin." I read books about how pumpkins grow, and they created a book about the life cycle of a pumpkin. The vocabulary words for the week were fun words, so the students picked up on them pretty quickly as well. It's so interesting to see the difference in how much they learn when they are actually enjoying themselves!

For my action research, I did not get much data collected in the three days we had school, because no school for students on Friday was a last minute decision due to one of the staff passing away. On Monday and Wednesday; however, I had the students roll playdoh to form letters. I had them put die-cut letters underneath clear plastic plates, and roll playdoh to form the letters on the plates. The students did really well with this. My hope is that by forming the letters, they picked up on their different lines and circles to descriminate between each of them. On Thursday, I played BINGO with the students in the conference room. They had to spin to get a letter and then find the letter on their card. I was surprised to see how well some of them were doing with their letters. It also helps a lot when I make the sound of a letter they can't recognize right away. This shows me that there is definitely a strong correlation between letter recognition and letter sounds. Last week, we sent home capital and lowercase letter cards along with a ring to hook them onto. Students that did not do well recognizing their letters on their progress notes received these. Since there is research that says that students need that extra parent motivation and help at home, I am hoping this will help not only the small group I am focusing my action research on, but all of the students who need the extra help.Next week, I plan to have the students write their letters on wax paper using finger paint, and writing their letters on trays filled with sand. I'm hoping these kinesthetic activities will continue to help them learn their letters. I plan to continue to only focus on the letters we've gone over in class, vowels, and the letters in their first names. If they veer from these letters, of course it is okay. But I feel this is a better approach rather than overwhelming them with all 26 letters.