Friday was a great day for room 107. For the first time the kiddos seemed to really be in the groove of the school day. It was great to see them sit down and get to work without consistent reminders for a whole assignment.
During the afternoon I pulled kids aside for math assessments. I am starting to be able to pick out the kids who are in trouble academically and my cooperating teacher and I have been collaborating on how we will meet these children's needs when we have a significant number of kids that are gifted that we must differentiate for as well. Our primary concern at the moment is finding some differentiated homework assignments to begin the process at home.
We finished our day with Friday fun time. It was nice to see the kids have the opportunity to let loose! However at the same time kids who had not finished their work had to use the time to get caught up. While there were quite a few that had been chattty during work time that I wasn't concerned about, there were a couple who I knew had been very overwhelmed by the size and complexity of what was being asked of them and felt bad that they had to work when they clearly needed a break. It was a hard balance to find.
Julie,
ReplyDeleteI'm in 107 too! (just at the upper campus)
I've enjoyed reading your posts and having a little window into the goings on at the lower campus. I'd be interested to hear how you and your cooperating teacher are planning to differentiate for math. Will you do lots of station work or provide lots of choice in terms of activities? How will this work in with the investigations curriculum?
My teacher likes to use technology and leveled computer games to differentiate in math. I'm excited to get to work with some other strategies as well, but it's pretty cool how directly you can differentiate just with games. My teacher showed us one site where students choose from games based on their MAP score.
Hope all is going well at lower campus and I look forward to learning more about first grade!
It's amazing how quickly kids adjust to a school routine, isn't it? After just 5 days, your first graders sound like they were getting their heads around the routines and were feeling settled in, even if that means some squirrely-ness on a Friday afternoon. That's to be expected, right? It's good to see you're sensitive to the different reasons kids are talkative or anxious and that you can respond accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Meggie's questions in her response suggested some interesting methods for differentiation. Do your first graders use computers much (yet)? In addition to creating actual work that's differentiated, do you plan to have flexible grouping that allows you to teach to small groups of students before they begin independent work (or after, so you can review and assess)? I guess that was Meggie's question about station work . . . Keep us posted.
One advantage to having Current Issues with Dr. Heacox is you have an in-house differentiation expert. Now that you have a "real" situation that demands differentiating, you should consider talking with her about resources & best practices she'd recommend. You know she'll be flattered, right :-)