Each day in my kindergarten classroom, I moved the Earth around the Sun so that my students could see that the calendar was not a linear, boxy, abstract entity that re-set at the end of each month.  This calendar mobile was inspired by one that my friend Cheryl Silcox created while she was teaching young children in Shishmaref, Alaska.  It is easy to construct with flexible PVC pipe and sentence strips.  At the bottom edge of each sentence strip, I hole-punched a spot for each day of the month, then numbered the holes.  For each child in my classroom, I hung a special "card" (seen in the photo as birds, spaceships and other shapes) for his/her birthday.  There were cards for holidays as well.  In this way, the students could look up at the calendar above them and see how long they needed to wait until a birthday or a special holiday.  The entire solar system was represented in my classroom, with Mercury close to the Sun and Pluto in a far corner.  In the photo, Venus looks like it is out of place, yet it is closer to the Sun than the Earth.   The Earth isn't visible in this photo, but it should be hanging from the correct day (numbered hole) on the calendar.

I taught kindergarten in Valdez for 8 years, and I kept all of my students' birthday "cards" hanging on my calendar.  My kindergarten "graduates" would come back to visit in my classroom, and they were pleased to see that their birthdays were still in place on my calendar.  When it was their special day, I was able to find them in the hallways and wish them a happy birthday.  We did have a few Jehovah Witness families in Valdez who didn't celebrate birthdays, yet these students were in the other 2 kindergarten classrooms in our school.  

Birthdays were a BIG DEAL in my classroom, perhaps because they provided another chance for us to celebrate our classroom community.   For every student (even those students who had their birthdays during our summer vacation),  we would create a unique "Birthday book" on the day that we celebrated that student's birthday (usually with cupcakes provided by the family...an occupational hazard for kindergarten teachers!).  Each student would illustrate a page about why he/she liked that special student and I would illustrate a page as well.  In the photo below, we were illustrating pages that said, "I like Arriana because..."  The birthday kiddo would illustrate a page that said, "I like myself because..."  During the day, I would take time with each child to help them to write about their illustration.  Some students were able to write independently, like Erin who wrote the example seen below.  Erin was a very advanced student who home schooled for her academic subjects....I love her invented spelling of miniaturized!  Some students wrote a few words and I wrote the rest of the story that they dictated to me.  Then, I would make copies of all the pages so that I could keep a copy of our birthday books in a 3-ring binder in the classroom for my students to read when they wanted.  The original birthday book was sent home with the special student...along with the leftover cupcakes.  

In my post from September 10, 2017 about my morning meetings, you can see the "standard classroom" monthly calendar that I used during our daily gathering.  My students learned and practiced math skills with this "linear" calendar as we counted how many days until a special event (one-to-one correspondence) and counted how many days we had been in school that year (place value and base 10).    We would also estimate objects that the "student of the day" would stuff into our estimating jar, which was located next to the calendar.    Some teachers use this calendar time to practice patterns (ABAB, ABBA, ABC, etc.), but we practiced these patterns during our "centers" time.  Due to our "student of the day" time during the morning meeting, we didn't have enough time to practice patterns as well.  

Each day, my students saw that calendars could be represented in 2 different ways-- circular and linear.  It was exciting to show my students that our planet travels around the Sun every year.  I helped them to understand that when they turned 6 (a monumental event in their young lives), it meant that they had traveled around the Sun 6 times.   I'm thankful to my friend Cheryl Silcox for showing me this circular calendar in her classroom in Shishmaref.  

Here are 2 more photos of my classroom, one from the very beginning of the 2017-18 school year with the traditional classroom calendar chart and one that shows the circular calendar in early May, 2017.  You can see that there aren't as many birthday "cards" hanging on the calendar, yet you can see the Earth in its place for the day, orbiting the Sun.   You can also see how lucky I was to teach in this classroom.  It was full of sunlight for our plants thanks to the large windows overlooking our second favorite place in the school---the playground!

As a newly retired teacher, my heartfelt dream is to travel and visit kindergarten classrooms around the world-- New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Alaska (my favorite country of all), Botswana, Georgia (in the region of the Caucasus Mountains), Iceland, Finland, and on and on.  

I started teaching kindergarten in Teller, near Nome, Alaska in the fall of 1996.  I was an enthusiastic and very inexperienced teacher at that point in my life, as well as being a mother of a toddler.  There was so much to learn from my Inupiat kindergarten students and paraprofessional teachers during my 5 years in Teller.  In the fall of 2004,  I left the far north to work with home school students (preK to high school) in the Prince William Sound area.   After 5 years as an advisory teacher to home school families, I re-entered the classroom in Valdez.  Initially, I worked as a paraprofessional, then I stepped into the role of "Gifted and Talented" teacher for 2 and a half years.  Eventually, in the fall of 2013, I was hired as one of the three kindergarten teachers in Valdez.  I enjoyed the creative and wildly energetic nature of my kindergarten students for the next 8 years, until I retired in the spring of 2021.  Combined with my five years in the kindergarten (and PreK) in Teller, I devoted 13 years to my young students.  

I can't recall when I first read the book Teacher by Sylvia Aston-Warner.  In 2013, I wrote briefly about this unique book in this "brain care" essay.   In that essay, I wrote...

"One of the first books that changed my outlook on literacy and culturally appropriate teaching is Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner.  In the 1950's, the author taught in Maori schools using revolutionary techniques that based literacy lessons on the children's authentic stories.  When I worked in the Alaska Native village of Teller with kindergarten students, I helped the students to make their own books in which they illustrated and dictated short stories about Inupiaq cultural values such as "love of family" and "hunter success."  In this way, students were strengthening these personal memories at the same time that they were working on transferring literacy skills into long-term memory."

I recently re-read Teacher, after recommending it to a fellow teacher.  My summary above is incorrect...Sylvia Ashton-Warner began teaching Maori students in 1932 and she published this book in 1963.  It was inspiring to learn that, at age 61, she pursued a path of learning and teaching that is similar to the journey that I wish to take.  For 10 years, Sylvia studied and taught in India, Israel, England, the U.S. and Canada, then returned to New Zealand.  In 1979, she published her autobiography, I Passed This Way.  This book is on its way to my mailbox, and I plan to write another post after reading it.

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was born in 1908, 114 years ago.  She started teaching 90 years ago, when my grandmother, who is still lively and humorous at age 99, was in the 4th grade.    Our world was so different 9 decades ago, and her experiences in rural Maori villages were very different than my experiences in rural Inupiaq villages, yet her observations about young children and their creativity are applicable to all classrooms.  

She explained, in her exuberant style, "I like unpredictability and variation; I like drama and I like gaiety; I like peace in the world and I like interesting people, and all this means that I like life in its organic shape and that's just what you get in an infant room where the creative vent widens.  For this is where style is born in both writing and art, for art is the way you do a thing and an education based on art at once flashes out style."   "On the five-year-old level the mind is not yet patterned and it is an exciting thought.  True, I often get the over-disciplined European five, crushed beyond recognition as an identity, by respectable parents, but never Maoris; as a rule a five-year-old child is not boring.  In an infant room it is still possible to meet an interesting, unpatterned person." (these quotes can be found on pages 98 and 99 of the 1986 edition of Teacher)

I found many areas of overlap between her ideal classroom and my own ideal place for learning.  On page 94, she explains that she tries to "bring as many facets of teaching into the creative vent as possible, with emphasis on reading and writing.  And that's just what organic teaching is; all subjects in the creative vent.  It's just as easy for a teacher, who gives a child a brush and lets him paint, to give him a pencil and let him write, and to let him pass his story to the next one to read.  Simplicity is so safe.  There's no occasion whatever for the early imposition of a dead reading, a dead vocabulary.  I'm so afraid of it.  It's like a frame over a young tree making it grow in an unnatural shape.  It makes me think of that curtailment of a child's expansion of which Erich Fromm speaks, of that unlived life of which destructiveness is the outcome."  If I imagine walking into her classroom, this is what I envision seeing, based on her detailed and sometimes self-deprecating descriptions in Teacher:

• joyful children in motion, dancing around, chattering with each other and sharing their work
• the combined sounds of conversation, blocks falling, piano music, frustrated crying, and a million questions being asked about all things under the sun
• children leaning intently over their writing/ drawing/ painting work, lost in the moment of creation
• natural objects for children to study--rocks, leaves, bugs, etc--treasures from their rambles outside
• well-used books that were written by the children as well as some readers that focus on Maori life
• a celebration of children's best attempts to communicate through writing and art
• some elements of a "traditional classroom", such as children copying their personal "organic key vocabulary words" on the chalkboard and reviewing these words on cards with each other

One of my guiding thoughts in the classroom was this:  "Teaching is listening.  Learning is talking."  At times, I would doubt myself because my classroom was so much louder and more disorderly than the 2 kindergarten classrooms across the hall;  however, I felt that I was a better teacher when I listened carefully to all of my students and gave them lots of freedom to bounce ideas off each other.  As often as I could, I would act as a scribe for my students in their journals so that they could see their words in print.  Some years, my students were able to put the pieces together and write their own original thoughts on paper.  There were years when the students were able to help each other how to write and read words.  Some groups of students found it difficult to get to this point, and I faulted myself for not teaching them to trust their own spelling and writing.  There were times that I probably did too much work for my students, by writing their words down instead of taking the time to teach them how to trust themselves as writers.   On page 132, Sylvia explains, 

"I talk to them all day.  I answer thousands and thousands of questions.  Mainly they teach themselves.  More and more I think that my converse with them is the main consideration.  I have a very high standard of written composition.  But often the noise is too much at my age.  And this particular brand of discipline.  There's discipline all right.  But it's the inner, instinctive discipline that obliterates the external, the imposed brand.  But oh, life is so appallingly short.  I hope I have the courage to run a real infant seedbed, allowing the marvellously abstract pattern of behaviour that pushes up from the unconscious.  When I'm rocking in my armchair at ninety and looking back I'll never forgive myself if I haven't used this time.  Think of the regret that old age could be!  To review the past and perceive what you could have done!  Had you the courage!"

I will end here and write a post tomorrow about the ways in which Teacher inspires me to action as well as the more painful, discouraging parts of her book.  

 

My Kindergarten "Morning Meeting"

I absolutely love my "morning meeting" in kindergarten.  The elements of this meeting include

• a predictable, easy-to-read morning message with emphasis on sight words
• a mixed up version of this morning message (done by the student of the day and 2 friends)
• calendar skills (counting to special days as well as place value for how many days we've been in school)
• estimating skills
• riddles based on the letter of the week
• a "show and tell" time for the student of the day
• a read-aloud book (if we have time)

Here's a more detailed description of the first 4 elements along with 3 photos, since a picture is worth a thousand words.  I'll describe the "letter of the week" riddles and "student of the day" journal and "show and tell" activity in my next post.

Here's our predictable, easy-to-read morning message with emphasis on sight words, which are written in red.  The words on the larger white board are written on magnetic sentence strips, which are easy to order from Amazon.   The sentences on the smaller white board easel are just written in dry erase marker.

This is a message on the 6th day of school.  As the year goes on, I add more challenging words to our message yet it always starts with the day of the week and an alliterative adjective (Mellow Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday and Friendly Friday!)
In the photo below, you can see how the student of the day and 2 friends are working together to mix up the message.  I love listening to their conversations during this time because they help each other to read the words and put them in an order that will sound funny, such as putting "to" and "to" together to make "tutu", the ballet costume.  This "mixed up message" activity happens while I am greeting the other students and sending the attendance/lunch count to the office.   When this is done, I call the students to their spots at the carpet so that we can start the morning meeting.  

 The last photo here shows our student of the day in the special chair next to the calendar.  It was taken on the 5th day of school, so there are 5 blue straws just visible on the left hand side of the photo.  When we count up to the 100th day and beyond, the students get some great daily practice in counting by 5s and 10s with the straws that represent how many days we have been in school.  We group them in 10's with rubber bands to build understanding of place value.
In the space on the lower left of the photo, you can see where we were estimating the number of dominos that I put in a small plastic jar.  On the 5th day of school, the estimates ranged from 5 to 6,000 because the kids wanted to show their peers that they knew large numbers.  The actual number of dominos is circled (9)  I use the "fairness jar" to pick 4 students to do the estimates so that we don't spend too much time on this activity. I do think that it is an exciting way for kids to build fluency with estimating and the symbolic form of the numbers they have chosen.  After I write down the estimates, they are motivated to count as a group to find out how many objects are really in the jar.

2015 ASTE Presentation for "Hands-on iMovie Workshop: Celebrating Student Success"

Learning Final Cut Pro X at ASTE 2014 with an amazing teacher, Mr. Larry Jordan!

This is a 4-minute long "trailer" for a documentary film about the George Gilson Middle School in Valdez, Alaska.
At the 2014 ASTE conference, I spent a fast-paced 6.5 hours with Mr. Larry Jordan learning some of the tools and tricks for Final Cut Pro X.  I chose this class because I am helping two local filmmakers in Valdez (SEED Media) to edit the footage they captured with students in the spring of 2013.  I set this documentary film project in motion in February 2013 when I realized that we had an amazing opportunity to film this school (built in 1965) and interview key community members before the school was torn down in June, 2013.  I organized funding for this project ($10,000 from sources including the City of Valdez, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, Copper Valley Telecom, and private donors) and helped with the logistics of six full days of filming with a small team of middle school students and SEED media filmmakers Thomas Tapp and Jorge Arcinega.  Last May, I purchased my own copy of Final Cut Pro X so that I could learn how to edit and create video pieces at a higher quality than iMovie projects.

Last week, this project was highly ranked for an Alaska Humanities Forum grant, but it did not receive funding due to a high volume of quality applications for the AKHF grants.  I am now searching for funding for the final editing phase of this project so that we can complete the film and have a "red carpet premier" event when the new middle school opens in early September, 2014.  Using Final Cut Pro X and the lessons I learned from Mr. Larry Jordan, I am doing some preliminary editing work and "scrubbing" the footage to find the best segments and quotes for the final movie.  When I am stuck, I can always refer to Mr. Jordan's extensive online collection of video tutorials about Final Cut Pro X.  I hope that ASTE continues to bring Mr. Jordan to this annual conference so that other educators can overcome the "intimidation factor" about using Final Cut Pro X and use this powerful program to teach students how to create high quality films.

Reading about teaching and brain research...

I love to read.  This is something that my kindergarten students know very well, because I read an average of 6 books a day out loud (with plenty of expression) at the beginning, middle and end of our days together.  I talk with my kindergarten students about my favorite books and my love of reading.  I get very excited when they read their favorite books to me and to each other.
During spring break, I had some time for professional reading.  I read The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku and The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley.  Now, I am thoroughly enjoying Mission Possible by Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia about the Success Academy schools in New York.
The book includes a DVD with lessons taught by Success Academy teachers.   Here's a taste of the book's message:  "Rigor is a mind-set and an attitude about kids and their capacity to think and solve problems.  It's a belief system.  It's the conviction that we're harming kids if we don't treat them as smart and thoughtful.  Everyone agrees that it's easier for very young children to learn a new language.  Well, we think they can learn everything more deeply and faster than our country seems to give them credit for.  People commonly think rigor is simply about the curriculum.  That's important, but what matters even more are the adults and the power of their instruction--and how effectively the teacher works to make the students think.  Rigor is a core value of ours.  We think it is important.  We believe in it for its own sake.  We think it improves our community and the world around us."
Here are some key ideas from the two books I read during spring break...
Michio Kaku's book gives a historical overview of brain research and major insights about brain functioning from the last few decades.  Then, he travels into the future with chapters on "telekinesis", "telepathy" and the question of whether we can "download" our consciousness and memories in a digital form that can be preserved and replayed on computers.  I was especially interested in the research being done on depression and other forms of mental disorders, since I know a number of people who deal with "seasonal affective disorder" or another form of depression.  On page 208, Dr. Helen Mayberg explains, "Depression 1.0 was psychotherapy--people arguing about whose fault it was.  Depression 2.0 was the idea that it's a chemical imbalance.  This is Depression 3.0.  What has captured everyone's imagination is that, by dissecting a complex behavior disorder into its component systems, you have a new way of thinking about it."  The Future of the Mind book gave me a great foundation for understanding the research findings that we will be hearing about from the Obama administration's BRAIN project (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) and the European Union's Human Brain Project.
The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley is based on extensive research about school performance as measured by the "PISA" test (Programme for International Student Assessment) developed by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)   To write this book, Amanda Ripley documented the experiences of 3 American students who chose to study in highly ranked "top education outcome" countries:  Finland, South Korea and Poland.  This book is a great "big picture" look at the issues facing educational reform in the US.  The message here is the same as the Mission Possible book--invest in teacher education programs and make sure that only the best and brightest are hired to teach in our schools.  This is a challenging reform to pass in our country, because we have had relatively low standards for teacher preparation and hiring for so many years.  We need to find a way to move away from "salary incentives based on test results" and towards the creation of teaching programs that replicate the success of the best schools in our nation as well as the best schools in other countries.

"Bananza!" Simple ways that I use technology daily and weekly in kindergarten

"Bananza!" is what we say when we get a great idea in my class (thanks to the book Monkey Ono by J.C. Phillipps)  Every day, I love taking photos of my kindergarten students and their work in class.  I don't have parent permissions to publish individual student photos at this point, so I'll just stick with the photos of their work.
Here are the simple technology tools that I use on a daily and weekly basis to support learning in my kindergarten classroom:

• A digital camera allows me to celebrate the students' work and to catch their projects before they are taken apart to create new projects.  The camera also allows me to celebrate friendships in our classroom.  I print out and put photos of friendships in our class photo book as well as putting some photos on the wall as a reminder of the important of friendships and "sticking with your buddy" (from the book Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann)  
• A digital video camera  allows me to film the students as they read independently (or do their best to recall the words from the story.)  My camera (Canon vixia HFR21) is not "top of the line" but it has worked well for several years.  It is important to have a tripod for stability and a good microphone for sound quality.  I experimented with the Canon camera microphone (not so good) and 2 cheap "lavalier" microphones (not good at all!)  I tried having the students use the video camera on my MacBook Pro with a USB headset microphone.  The students loved looking at themselves while they were reading, but the audio wasn't the best quality and the headset kept falling off.  Now, we are using a Shure headset microphone with the Canon camera.  Twice a year, I give families a DVD copy of their child reading (at Christmas and at the end of the year) as well as copies of the digital photos I have taken in class.  In addition to "celebrating our reading" videos, I have made 2 "backwards math videos" with the students in iMovie.  My students must think that I am crazy, because I encourage them to knock down their own block structures or mess up their pattern block designs. When this film footage is slowed down and run backwards, the students see themselves magically creating their towers and patterns out of chaos.  Very amusing...
• Color printers and copiers allow me to create beautiful books with the students.  We have 3 types of books that we create on a regular basis in our classroom.  We make birthday books for each student with pages that say, "I like (name of student who is having a birthday) because....."  The original pages are created with colored pencils and ball point pens, then the birthday book pages are copied in color so that the original can go home with the birthday student and the copied pages can go in our birthday book collection.  We also create "riddle books" with riddles that students create at home based on the letter of the week.  For our "student of the day" books, the students write down stories in a journal with help from their family at home.  Then, I use the color copier to make copies of these journal pages so that we have a back up copy if the journals are lost.
• in the future, I plan to use a digital voice recorder to capture audio of students reading books, telling stories or discussing their ideas.  

These technology tools are so simple, yet they allow me to celebrate the students' learning in the classroom and share their great work with their families...as well as preserve it for students and families to enjoy for years to come.