Data, Data, and more Data!

Hey blogger friends! It has been a while since my last post, but I had good reason, I have been in my classroom getting ready for this year's kiddos to start on Monday! I can't wait to meet all of my students and to start learning with them.

Onto today's post...data! We are constantly collection data on our kids. At our school, in the older grade levels, each student has a data notebook. They use these notebooks to keep track of how they are doing in preparing for the FCAT, our state test. Well, this year, I decided to implement data notebooks into my kindergarten class. I believe it is great for our students to have goals and to know where they are at in meeting their goals. Each month I will conference with each student to discuss a learning goal that they would like to set for that month. It could be learning more letters, writing their name, or even drawing a person. Then, we will work on that goal together for the month. That goal sheet will go into their data notebook which will include this Data Packet. Our school is focusing on the basic skills this year in order to help our students become better readers and mathematicians. Here is the data packet I created.

Each of the pages in this packet lists different skills. When I am testing students I will mark the letters, numbers, words, etc. that they know. Then, the students will take the folder to their seats and color/trace the items that I have marked. For my students this will be like graphing what they know. For some of the skills I will simply write a date once the child has mastered the skill. Students will practice writing their names, drawing a person, and following directions once each quarter in their data notebooks. It will be great to have a folder to pull out during conferences to show parents how their child has grown over the course of the school year! At the end of the year the students will have a wonderful collection of many skills we cover in kindergarten! Thanks to Scrappin Doodles for the super clip art! Click here to view the data packet in Google Documents. It looks much better than the one on Scribd.com!
Kindergarten Assessment

If for some reason you cannot download this item, or if it does not download neatly, post your email and I will gladly email you the original file. Some of the alignment seemed to be off when I uploaded to scribd.com!

Keeping YOU and your STUDENTS organized!

Okay, back to this whole organization thing...here are a few tips that I have found in the last few weeks:)

Love this video tip, the only thing I would add is to laminate the prong folders. They last FOREVER if you run them through a laminator. After they are out of the laminator simply use a razor blade to cut around the prongs.

This is a list of 100 ways to promote organization in your classroom from Scholastic. Love some of the transition ideas!

I LOVE Kelly's Kindergarten! Her website is easy to use and everything is FREE! Anyway, her page on classroom organization offers GREAT tips. I especially like the paint stirrer name tag idea. I will be using this idea on a magnetic cabinet in my classroom. The students names will be placed in reading groups, and by having them on the paint sticks the names will be large enough to read from across the room. I like having them magnetic so that I can move them around as my groups change.

Have a great afternoon friends! I am off to do some creating...

Counting Coconuts

This is an amazing blog. It is written by a mom who is committed to teaching her child using the Montessori method. Over the last several months I have become more interested in Montessori because we have enrolled our three year old into a montessori school. We have been learning the process along with him, and I am blown away by all the things he is and will be learning in his classroom. As a teacher in a public school I have a great deal I can learn from montessori classrooms. I am looking forward to learning more and I can't wait to hear more from Mari-Ann at Counting Coconuts!



These are just a few of my favorite posts from her blog:

Personalized Guess Who Game
Beach Themed Activities
I Spy Bottles
My Place on the Map

Enjoy friends!

Hop, Hop, Hop...learning to count!

We start the year off by learning the numbers 1-10. This year I want my kiddos to know the know not only the number, but how to count to 10 and the words for each number very quickly at the beginning of the school year. I created this fun game for two with that in mind. The game can be played two different ways. First, you can use the fly cards with numbers on them to play with the number word mats. Or you could use the fly counting cards with the number mats to practice counting and number recognition. I will post all of the different pages and you can use them however you please! You will have to print two of each page in order to have enough supplies for games for two kids. As you can see above I printed the lily pads on blue card stock.

Lily Pad Hop Number Mats

Lily Pad Hop Number Words Mat

Flies With Numbers

Flies for Counting

What's in YOUR bank?

Hey Friends:)

Here is a new fun activity for you to try out with your kiddos. As I mentioned the other day my goal was to create more fine motor activities in my classroom, however, I needed to make the center have more value than just the fine motor. So, here we have a center that focuses on fine motor but also incorporates data collection and money.

What's in YOUR bank?

In this activity students will place coins into a bank (I bought mine from Target for $1.00. I painted the top of each bank and made a cover for the outside.). As they put coins into the bank they will complete a bar graph telling which coins they have placed into the bank. (My graphs are laminated and we will use dry erase crayons so that they are reusable!)



Here are the pages for the activity! I hope you enjoy. If you are looking for some ways to differentiate, please read below!

What's in Your Bank Cover

What's in Your Bank

Differentiating

Eliminate the graph and focus on the fine motor and coin identification.
Use only one, two, or three coins.

ABC's, 123's, and Fine Motor...WHAT???

Well, the countdown is on! In just 17 short days I will meet my students for the 2011/2012 school year...and I am getting really excited!

With the start of this new school year I want to really focus on writing in my kindergarten classroom. I feel that we have lost some of the "other" subjects in an effort to cater to reading and math. Although I feel reading and math are very important, I also believe that some children will not come alive in their learning until we introduce them to writing...social studies...science...and all of the other lost "subjects". For today I am focusing on writing...but perhaps not writing in the way your are thinking. Many of the students in my classroom will come to me not having had much along the lines of fine motor work. How are they going to learn to write, if they can't maneuver their fingers to work in the write way. SO, for the first few weeks, fine motor activities it will be! Here are some of the ideas that I have found so far...what are your ideas?

Push Pin Punch Outs
I know...I know...many of you are probably thinking I am crazy to turn a bunch of new kindergartners loose with push pins, but no worries, they will be supervised:)! This is a great activity which will promote students using the "Pincher Grasp" which is what they will use when they are taught to hold a pencil correctly. The activity is simple. The student uses a push pin to punch out shapes from paper. All you need is some kind of "punching mat" (cardboard, carpet scrap, cork board, etc.), push pins, and shapes on paper. I will be starting the year by giving my students shapes to punch out, but as they get more advanced I will give them basic shapes to trace onto paper and then they will use the push pin to punch them out. And to appease those who do not want writing instruction done during reading time, you could use block letters as the shapes, which means they are not only developing some fine motor skills, but they are also practicing letter recognition! (I have read that puzzle pieces with the knobs make for great items to practice tracing techniques!) Click here to learn more about push pin punch outs!

Clothes Pins:
It seems that I always have a center or workshop using clothes pins. This year, I will have a center dedicated to moving things using just a clothespin. Students will move objects from on location to another using just a clothes pin. Objects fun for moving...cotton balls, crayons, Lego's, balled up paper, small toys, etc.

Stringing Beads:
This is a pretty easy center to set up as you can usually find packages of beads for with string in the dollar section at Target or even at the Dollar Store.

Nuts and Bolts:
This is going to be GREAT for my kiddos. First it will help them to continue to develop their fine motor skills, but they can also use the bolts for measurement. And being that the nuts and bolts will be different sizes, so they will have to use their spatial reasoning to help solve this problem!

Fill the Bank:
In this activity students will use coins to "Fill the Bank". Putting coins into a coin slot again encourages use of the pincher grasp, and therefore builds strength for holding a pencil. To connect this to graph building and data collection (another goal of mine for this year) my students will place the coins into the bank and create a graph as they go along. At the end they will be able to see which coin they had the most of and how many coins they put into the bank!

These are just a few ideas...more to come tomorrow with pictures:)!