Week 12: Video Pre-thinking

My revised goals are two part: one organizational and one part enhancing reflective thinking. For the second video I am sticking with the same kindergarten class. They are my Friday morning/energetic/gifted and quirky class. To survive them I have to be even more prepared than with the other kindergartner classes. I am still focusing on organizational skills for this class. For example, earlier this year they had a teddy bear week in their classrooms. I took a class to VTS a bear sculpture show them how to draw bears with texture. The first four classes elaborated their bears with bows, vests, dresses, tiaras and the like. The fifth kindergarten class ended up synthesizing a ninja ballerina bear, with masks, nun-chucks, ballet shoes, and tutus.

1. Organization and Structure in the Classroom

• identify student needs and teacher needs, physical and social
• This class needs to have movement built into their routine. They also need to learn when movement is appropriate. For example, in this lesson students are using paint and I want them at their seats when they have messy supplies. This class also shares their discoveries about their supplies verbally with their neighbors and sometimes with their friends across the room. I want to validate their social interactions, but at the same time contain excessive mess and distractions to the flow of the lesson.
• identify my patterns of organization and structure
• My desk and counter tops are  cluttered - totally visual spatial. But the student tables and supply shelf are organized and labeled. I do have an overflow student table in the middle of the room. It is converted into a supply table later in the day as my classes get younger and smaller. It is the point where my style of organization directly intercepts the student work space. My room is so small that I have to be flexible with supply and project storage. I tend to start the day by organizing my room and putting away projects that dried overnight. At the end of the day I am spent and only do cleaning up.
• evaluate the effects of organization and structure in meeting student and teacher needs
• If I set out my supplies on the center-most table, students can catch a glimpse of what supplies they will be using, and I can be centrally located to orchestrate student movement.   
• create modifications to meet student and teacher needs. 
• This past quarter I have implemented a clean up song at the end of class for grades 2-5. Students are able to pace their clean up. I have had only one student who ignored the cue of the clean up song and continued working. I have not implemented the clean up song with kindergarten or first. I think they would focus on the song and get distracted. They still get a count down for clean-up. I pick helpers as opposed to having students put up supplies themselves.  Kindergarten and first grade still seem to do better with more structure and less wiggle room for getting too experimental with the supplies.

This week I have started a tried and true lesson plan with kindergarten. It is a space shuttle lesson from Deep Space Sparkle http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2010/06/22/blast-off-space-shuttle-art-project/. It always turns out nice. It is a close ended lesson. I don't like to do many of those, but the students like being taught a schema for representing items they find interesting. I do not find it harmful to give them those schemas as confidence builders as long as by third grade we are elaborating and interpreting our symbol making. 

My goals for this lesson are to acknowledge student need for movement and interaction while at the same time giving a guided lesson that requires student attention and organization. To meet my goals I have been better about giving some of the supply management over to the students, and allowing for chatter during my instruction so students can vocalize their excitement. I have to use my bell or chime to transition the students back in. Before, my bell was a "you've gone too far and need to get quieter," signal.