A peek in our day.
It might surprise you, but this post is more for me than anyone else. As I get older, funny things happen to my brain. I am apt to forget what I ate for breakfast, let alone what strategies I used in the classroom a whole year ago. So come along and humor me (if you’re brave) while I put this down in writing so I can remember it later.
Each teacher will teach his or her own way. It’s similar to how we women clean our homes and decorate them – we like to put our unique twist on it. I am finding that for me to teach kindergarten well, I need to have lots of structure to the day.
Children thrive in a structured environment – where there aren’t any huge surprises coming at them. It helps them to feel safe and able to apply their minds to learning. It parallels parenting quite a bit. The teacher needs to mean what she says and not keep moving the line – especially in behavior management. Truthfully, this is hard, as any parent or teacher will tell you. But I will share what is working more for us later.
School begins at 8:30 and the children gather in the classroom. This picture was taken at the beginning of kindergarten in January, that’s why you will notice the walls are not as full. Two mornings out of three, we have chapel with the whole school.
The children line up on their number dot for the day and we head up to chapel for 30 minutes. These dots have been in the top 5 of the best things I did this year! You can purchase them on Amazon.
I found this quote in my teacher planner and it resonated with me. This is my aim! I try to involve them in learning their abc’s – not just tell them about it. We play games and learn how to read both with our eyes and our ears.
Once chapel is over, everyone heads back to the classroom where we pick up our water bottles and take a 5 minute break to fill those and use the restroom. After we are back in the classroom, reading class for the day begins.
Now here is where I will hop off the routine to talk about classroom management for a bit. If any of you are kindergarten or elementary teachers, you know that a room full of rambunctious, talkative children can look daunting . . . . and be overwhelming. Truth is, it can spiral out of control very quickly.
After doing some research this winter, I landed on Michael Linsin’s Smart Classroom Management Program. He has a website with info here. His basic plan is outlined in this interview here: “Classroom Management: 4 Keys to Starting the Year Off Right.” You can also purchase his books on Amazon.
He recommends making a clearly defined management plan before you ever begin school. This means deciding what consequences you will enforce and which rules you will go by. Teach them clearly and every day before any misbehaviors. This has been vital to our classroom.
Anytime you can give a reminder before misbehavior, it’s a good thing. Anytime you give a reminder after misbehavior, it’s a bad thing. You should be holding students accountable, but be preemptive whenever you can.
Michael Linsin
One of the key points he made is that the teacher does not take it personally when students cross the lines. Instead, you let the consequence do the heavy lifting for you. No sighing, berating the student, or lecturing them. Quietly let them know what they did wrong and hand out their consequence as if you are reading your grocery list.
So what does it look like in our classroom? We have four basic rules which hang on our wall.
I have a little teacher bell that sits on my desk. Anytime I want them to return to their seats, especially when class is beginning, I will ding the bell. They immediately know classtime is starting and they must raise their hands to speak. In fact, if I forget to ding the bell, they will often remind me. It’s become part of the structure that they crave.
If a child does speak without raising his hand, he gets his first warning. I put a mark on the whiteboard beside his name so he can keep track of where he is (and I can, too). Second offense is another warning. Then with the third and fourth offense for the day, we proceed to time outs. I have two little green chairs that we use in the reading corner. This is where they go to sit for a few minutes while on time out. They are still able to hear the classroom instructions, but do not get to join in the class activities. Fifth offense is the one they dread and do all they can to stay away from it – because they lose their precious prize for the day.
Repetition is key. One thing Michael Linsin emphasized is to teach your management plan well. Act it out in front of them to show them what misbehavior looks like and then repeat the plan often. So once class begins for us, the first thing we usually do is go over the classroom rules and consequences. This happens at the beginning of every day so it is fresh in their minds. In fact, they know the rules by heart now and like to add in variations of their own. It has become their classroom management plan – not just mine.
At the end of the day, we wipe the whiteboard clean – all is forgiven. A fresh new day awaits tomorrow.
After we go over the rules, we can then proceed with class. I am learning that review is half of learning the alphabet. So now that we have learned 15 of the letters, we spend the majority of the first period just doing review. This is our fun time.
We use Abeka K5 curriculum and the first thing we do is sing our abc song. Then we also sing our vowel song, which goes through all the short vowel sounds. Next we will say all the rhymes that go with each letter we have learned so far.
Behold my review basket. Here you will find my goodies that I keep for reviewing our letters and sounds. Some of these can be used individually if I feel a child needs one on one help. But most are for class activities.
We have popsicle sticks with letters on them and play games matching the sound to the letter. Quite often we play “capture the letter”, where they stand along the walls and try to say the correct letter on my card. If they get it right, they can cross over to me and “capture” the card. Whoever gets the most at the end of the game is the winner. Our CVC cards are lots of fun as well – and most times I just quickly decide what we will do with them. But often it is helping them learn to hear sounds in words. Our ears are vital to reading!
Flashcards are one of their favorites. We divide into two teams and see which team can get the most points by saying their card the quickest. They line up in two lines, so only the child at the front gets to guess the flashcard. I like this better than full class flashcards, since I want to know who is struggling and who is not.
And just so you know, I don’t follow all these class instructions the exact same every day – we mix and match, but try to get a good bit of them done during the day.
After review, we learn our new letter for the day and then proceed to seatwork. This is the pages they get to complete from their books. But soon it is break before we know it. At break, they usually line up on their number dot and we go out to class. Now that they are learning when to be quiet and not run, I am letting them go out on their own more.
When break is done, we come back for reading class again. The bell gets dinged and everyone settles down into their seats. This class usually begins with learning to read the blends that go along with the new letter for the day. I love how Abeka immediately teaches the blends to each new letter! And it’s only one small step more to adding a consonant to the end and reading their first CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word. We have had huge amounts of fun with these!
Once again, when instructional class time is done they can begin their seatwork and penmanship papers. This is still considered class time and they know to keep quiet until everyone is finished with their work.
As they each get done with their papers, they can then play with something from the quiet work corner. One thing I have learned to help keep the noise and chaos from spiraling out of control – is to always keep them doing something. It helps if there is not a time of complete idleness.
And although they are done with their work and this is now considered a quiet activity time, I still try to keep them learning. Almost everything in the quiet work corner is geared towards them learning letters, numbers, reading, or developmental skills.
This is where I will tell them that class time has changed and it is now quiet work time. Again, this adds to the structure of the classroom and they are reminded that although they can talk to their partner, it can still go no higher than a whisper. Need I say that we are still working on this?! Some children’s whispers are louder than others. 🙂
We have some drawers on wheels filled with activity papers such as abc/123 dot-to-dot, mazes, highlighting vowels in paragraphs, etc. Some of the games I purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers website – like the dice game addition war.
I also saw on Pinterest how someone had made their own big cardboard dice and decided to try my hand at it. The children have loved these – especially at the beginning of the year! It helped with learning to count and recognize numbers. I made up a paper with numbers 1-12 and they can mark off the numbers they roll. Or sometimes we play one team against another team and see whose number gets the most points.
I purchased two sets of these magnetic letters on Amazon that come with a magnetic dry erase board, dry erase pens, and eraser. Vowels are red and consonants are blue. We have used them as class activities, and also for quiet work activities. As the children learn more CVC words, I know we will use these often!
Some of the games and activities require game markers (we use gems), dice, and bingo chips. You can buy plastic gems on Amazon.
Last year we had these dry erase counting charts for math class. We have used them this year in math class – and then I got the bright idea to have them added to the quiet work corner. They usually play against a partner, roll their dice, and move their gem marker along the numbers. Whoever reaches 100 first, wins!
These are our Secret CVC Word puzzles. We had these last year and they are getting loved again this year! I purchased them on Teachers Pay Teachers and highly recommend them. You will need to laminate them so the children can use dry erase markers to fill in the letters. In the box below each picture, you are to write the letter it begins with. When you have all three boxes filled in, you have just decoded a new word!
Another little box of goodies that they can play either alone or with a partner.
After second period, we get to go out for lunch and break. Then we come back in for quiet time. Here is where I have been dividing the boys on one rug and the girls on the other rug – unless we are missing too many people and it becomes uneven. They all have their own stuffed animal for a pillow and we turn the lights out for fifteen minutes. It’s a lovely time, as most kindergarten teachers will tell you! Sometimes I sneak a chocolate from my desk. And I turn on some classical music. Who doesn’t like Beethoven, chocolate, and quiet time?
Then when it is over, we begin math class. It looks very much like reading class – only with numbers. Once that is done, we have our last break and then come in for story time. After story time, it is usually a class activity such as art, show and tell, painting, sidewalk chalk, putting together letter books, etc. Again, I find that this needs to be something that keeps them very occupied or they can begin to get rather noisy.
They are such lovable children – in some ways, it feels like I am teaching my grandchildren. Each little one who walks in my classroom is precious to me – whether they learn fast or with more difficulty. And they each add a unique quality to the class that is incredibly special! It might seem strange to talk about them without a picture of them, but I wanted to respect the privacy of both the students and the parents with social media.
It has been so much fun to gather ideas and put them into use in my own classroom – seeing which ones work for us and which ones we discard. And some things that maybe worked last year just aren’t feasible with this year. So I’m getting the drift that things change with each year of teaching. I change, the children are different children, and I learn new things all the time. That is the fun of it!
And if you made it all the way to the bottom of this long post, you are a saint. It was longer than I thought it would be, but I know I will find it valuable for myself if I am privileged to teach another year. Now go pour yourself a wonderful cup of coffee for hanging in there!
May you all have a wonderful week filled with smiles from little people!
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Diana says
Thank you so much for this post! As a homeschooler, I found the information about classroom management invaluable. I would like to buy one of Michael Linsin’s books, and wondered if you had any suggestions for which would be best to start with?
Thanks again!
Diana Johnston
Kendra says
Diana, I looked at his art management book a bit, since I also teach music. However, for kindergarten, I purchased a small pdf book off his website that outlined an elementary management plan. You can go to his site to see those. But if I were to choose one on Amazon, I would probably choose “The Classroom Management Secret”. Just my opinion – and it looks like it might be the most all-encompassing.
Diana says
Kendra, thank you so much! I plan on ordering it soon! Again, thanks for the lovely blog post – it was such a help to me. Thank you for the blog, and have a wonderful summer!
Diana