Technology Activities

These photos were taken during circle time of the afternoon session. After the class goes over the dates for the day and the weather, we jump right into the language arts period with the A, B, C's. In the photo to the left, I used the C.D. player to play a song that my mentor teacher and I have decided to call "Alphardy". This song is used in the classroom to assist students with letter sounds. The song starts from the letter 'A' to the letter 'Z' and the children absolutely love this song. The picture to the right is of me holding one of the learning books with the letters of the alphabet. I use this as a supplement to the song to add more of a retention percentage to the activity. The song helps with musically inclined students while the book helps with visual learners.

Technology Activities

To prepare for Halloween, the Kindergarten teachers and I got together and decided to have the students watch a video based on the upcoming occasion. We decided to play Barney's Halloween Party seeing as how the video focused not on what Halloween was about, but also how to stay safe. The students enjoyed watching the video and they were able to retell the story of the video and the safety tips that were discussed by Barney and his friends.

Portfolios

In the writing center, my students are given worksheets of their alphabets to trace, write, and color. In this photo, Yoyo is shown putting her worksheet away in the portfolio box. All the students are required to do worksheets for their alphabets in the writing center. When the students are done with any work they do in this center, they open up the portfolio box and look for the portfolio with their name on it. This is a form of assessment that also meets the standard 14 required in the subject of social studies. The portfolio box is an assessment tool that we use to record the students’ progress with writing center worksheets and homework requirements that are due every Friday of the week.

Fine & Gross Motor Skills Assessment

This photo is another portion of the Reading First Assessment where students were instructed to write their first and last name on two different lines. This portion of the test was to assess their fine motor skills and meet standard 14 for the subject area of social studies (14.K.1: Knows his or her own name, gender, age, and place in family).

Fine & Gross Motor Skills Assessment

These are photos of the students and I outside during a session of P.E. This performance based assessment tested their fine and gross motor skills by having the students catch and toss a ball. The importance of fine and gross motor skills at this grade level is crucial to understanding the level of performance in regards to writing and movement in the student.

Math Assessment with Modifications

This is a photo of Regan, my student with autism, working on his assessment of shapes. He has two sets of each shape and he is trying to match the first set with the second set that was laid on the table. Regan is being helped by his one-on-one aide, Mr. Sumor. Most of Regan’s assessments are based on sorting and matching with only one characteristic—shape.

Math Assessment

These photos are of the afternoon session exhibiting a cooperative group experience during a performance based assessment of grouping and sorting of shapes. They were instructed to put each shape into groups using one characteristic which was based on their shape rather that their color.

Math Assessment

This photo is of Pio and Raj doing their sorting and grouping of linker cubes into the same color groups. This was an informal assessment to see if they could understand the concept of grouping using one characteristic of objects and as you can see they were successfully in placing the same colored linker cubes into the same group.

Math Assessment

This photo of Raj shows him using the number cards and teddy bears as manipulatives. I was assessing Raj’s understanding of one-to-one correspondence, number construct, and number order. This form of assessment is part of the Reading First Assessment that is given to students at three periods of the school year—beginning, middle, and at the end.

Mini-lecture

This photo of me is an example of a mini-lecture. In this photo I was explaining to students what they will be doing for peer groups with the learning books. A mini-lecture is a concise way to provide students with background information to spark interest and give them a target--setting up an activity or discussion.