Pre-K teaching times, Vol. 7, Issue 8 (Apr. 2011)

Pre-K Teaching Times

VOLUME 7, ISSUE 8

APRIL 2011

In This Issue
Reading in Small Group Phonemic Awareness Social Studies Science Math CLASS Assessment

Reading in Small Group
At least once a week, teachers should plan and conduct a small group activity in which you read a book to the children and engage them in a supporting activity designed to encourage discussion and interaction. For example, you could ask the children to:
predict the outcome of the story retell the story suggest another ending to the story discuss their favorite part of the story recall the story sequence answer comprehension questions about the story
You could also expand and practice concepts from the book. After reading Chickens Aren't the Only Ones (Heller), the children could sort animals that come from eggs from those that do not (SD 2 d). After reading Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse (Henkes), the children could create a set of cards by drawing or cutting out faces from magazines that display various emotions. Each child could then draw a card and act out the emotion or feeling while the other children guess what it is (SE 3 e).
You must document the book you read and the activity in which the children engage in your lesson plans with the content standard(s) that best reflect the main purpose of the book and activity. The content standard may be related to any of the content standard domains. For example, if you read Ten Apples Up On Top (Seuss), the content standard could be MD 1 c. If you read The Hungry Caterpillar (Carle), the content standard could be SD 2 d. The best way to determine the content standard covered by this small group activity is to ask yourself: What do I want my children to learn from this story and activity?

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Reading in Small Group (Continued)
Small group reading can occur during the scheduled daily small group time or at another time designated by teachers. Some teachers pick the same day each week to read to the small group reading and conduct the supporting activity. Every child does not have to participate in this weekly small group reading activity, but many teachers choose to complete the small group reading activity more than once during the week because it greatly benefits the students.
Reading aloud to children is important because it helps children acquire knowledge and skills they will need to be successful in later life situations. It is the single most important activity for building knowledge. Reading aloud will also help children acquire the knowledge they will need to be successful readers themselves. Through hearing stories read aloud, young children learn the following basic, yet critically important, things:
Knowledge of printed letters and words Relationship between sound and print The meanings of words General information about the world they live in Awareness of the variety of books, print, and writing styles Reading for a purpose Connection between spoken language and written language
Following are suggestions for reading aloud to young children:
Be enthusiastic; your emotions will transfer to the children. Change your voice and facial expression. Make children aware of new information. Point out pictures as they relate to the story. Explain words they may not know to help increase vocabulary. Ask children questions before and after reading. Ask children questions as you read and have them make predictions. Read many kinds of books. Choose books that help you teach. Reread favorite books. Show the children the cover of the book and the title, author's name, illus-
trator, etc. Take advantage of teachable moments.
Storytime Action! (Bromann) is a wonderful reference book that includes 2,000 ideas for making 500 picture books interactive and engaging for your students.
Happy reading!

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PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Phonemic awareness is the ability to attend to, identify, and manipulate the sounds that are representative of graphemes in the English language. Such manipulation tasks include segmentation, deletion, substitution and addition of sounds in nonsense words and real words. Phonemic awareness also includes the synthesis of those segmented sounds (blending).
Phonemic awareness must be a part of the day's activities, weaving it into lessons and general classroom activities. Following are examples of activities that can be used as part of the instructional day. The activities should allow student to demonstrate increased awareness of speech sounds by performing various mental operations with speech sounds.
Phoneme Identification: Word to word matching: Do top and time begin with the same sound? Sound to sound matching: Is there a /p/ in nap? Sound isolation: What is the first sound in door?
Initial Sound Identification: Label several paper cups with individual letters (one letter per cup). Say a word that begins with the sound of one of the letters on the cups. Allow students to place a chip or token in the cup marked with the letter representing the beginning sound of the word.
Sound Patterns: Pronounce four words to students. You can use pictures to accompany the words. If you use pictures, place one picture in the first square of a grid and line the other three pictures next to it. Ask, Which picture(s) begins with __(for kindergarten), ends with ___(for first grade) or has the same middle sound __(for first or second grade) as the one in the square? If you do not use pictures, explain, I'm going to say three words. Which one has the same beginning sound as car? Cow, sister, tree. (If a child has difficulty with auditory/sequential memory, using the pictures will provide a visual cue.)
Initial/Final Sound Change Game: Allow students to identify and create new/different words by changing the beginning or ending sounds. Look around the room for words. (For example, if you change all words to begin with /k/, chair would be care, table would be cable. With ending sounds, pot would become pok, flag would become flak.)
Memory Game: Create a set of cards made up of pairs of pictures that begin with the same sound, e.g., car/cat; finger/fly, etc. Turn the cards face down and ask students to turn cards over until they find pictures that begin with the same sound. A pair is two words that begin with the same sound -- not two identical pictures. (Later you may include any even number of pictures that begin with the same sound. Any of the other pictures beginning with the same sound could be matches.)

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Social Studies
Previous Pre-K Teaching Times have explained that Social Studies can be seen in many contexts in Pre-K classrooms from day-to-day routines to staging centers, and have provided suggested activities for the Social Studies domain. Following are ideas to help teachers collect documentation to support specific indicators from Work Sampling System/Work Sampling OnLine (WSS/WSO).
Ms. Jones sees Caroline dressed as a dentist in dramatic play Ms. Jones, "Caroline who are you dressed up as today?" Caroline, "I'm the dentist!" Ms. Jones, "You are pretending to be a dentist. How does the dentist
help us?" Caroline, "The dentist helps our teeth." Ms. Jones, "Yes, the dentist does help our teeth but how does the
dentist take care of our teeth?" Caroline, "She cleans our teeth with the toothbrush."
What a great anecdotal note or description for a photo to support describing people's jobs and what is required to perform them.
Ms. Jones took a picture of Dustin in front of the fire truck Ms. Jones, "Dustin what vehicle is behind you in this picture?" Dustin, "A fire truck." Ms. Jones, "Yes, that is a fire truck. Tell me: who drives the fire
truck?" Dustin, "The fireman." Ms. Jones, "Dustin, you are really smart because you are correct
again. A fireman does drive a fire truck. What does a fireman do?" Dustin, "They help put out fires and keep people safe." Ms. Jones, "Wonderful! A fireman's job is to put out fires and keep
people safe."
Another fantastic example of describing people's jobs and what is required to perform them.
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Science
Science Ideas for the Classroom
Recommended Books: Fandex Family Field Guides: TREES by Steven Aronson, Workman Publishing, New York. This is an excellent book for the science area/center. Ask children to bring in five leaves from their yard, park, or nearby woods. This book, which is narrow and fans out, can be used to examine and compare/contrast the leaves brought in from the children's environment. Outdoor Explorers Franklin Watts Four-book Series:
Planting & Growing Shelters & Habitats Minibeasts Shapes & Patterns The four books of this series highlight exploring the world outside and ways to examine and investigate our surroundings. Content Standards: SD 2a: Observes, explores, and describes a wide variety of animals and plants. SD 2b: Recognizes there are basic requirements for all common life forms SD 2c: Observes, explores and describes a variety of living and non-living things SD 2e: Participates in activities related to preserving the environment
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Science (Continued)
Ideas for Activities
Details of a Pond: Ask students (with the help of their parents) to collect pond water in a covered glass jar to bring to school. Label where the pond water came from. Shake the water and ask children to watch as the heavier elements sink to the bottom. What are the materials in the water? Why are these elements in the water? Generate a list of predictions, then read about pond life to strengthen children's awareness of a pond as a habitat. Compare and contrast samples collected by various families from different ponds. Is some water clearer or darker than others? How could this be?
Parts of a Bush: Go on an outdoor walk with a small group of children. Spread a sheet under a bush. Shake the bush to see what falls onto the sheet. Take the items that fell from the bush back to the classroom and allow the children to group them by similarities. Have children dictate to their discoveries to you. Share with the entire class.
Insects/Spiders: Print photos of various insects and spiders from the Internet. Write down and explain the definitions of insects and of spiders to your class. Discuss with the children how insects and spiders are alike and how they are different. Allow children to examine the photographs to sort pictures by type. Go on an outdoor walk with children and ask them to watch for and point out any insects or spiders they see. Encourage children to work with their parents to collect insects and bring them to class. Place specimens of insects in clear plastic bottles in the Science Center.
Forest Animals: Introduce children to familiar forest animals with a book that includes birds, squirrels, bears, beavers, termites, etc. Ask children how the animals use the trees. Scaffold students to recognize that animals use trees for food, shelter. What would happen if trees were cut down and animals did not have access to them? Record children's comments.
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Math
Four year olds are naturally curious, love to explore, and need to have many hands-on experiences as they learn about the world around them. Teaching measurement to young children is not about inches, feet, and yards. It is more about learning how to compare the size of objects. It is also about counting and numbering. These skills must be learned and explored before a child can begin to measure with inches and feet. Words like more, less, tall, short, same, different, and almost should be part of their vocabulary. A natural way to introduce these mathematical terms is to use them with children during block play. Encourage children to verbally compare and contrast sizes of blocks and towers they build. When children can use comparison vocabulary relating to the size of various objects, they are ready to learn about measurement.
When introducing the concept of measuring to children, it is often best to complete measuring activities with a small group of students so you can model the measurement process and encourage children to use size vocabulary. When teaching measurement to young children, provide lots of opportunities for the students to order objects by size. Use everyday activities and real objects to help children understand measurement concepts.
An understanding of size and measurement develops as children use nonstandard materials to measure classroom items. Measuring with nonstandard materials such as blocks, pencils, markers, crayons, hands, feet, etc. as a measuring tool helps make the learning more meaningful for children. For example, give each student several large paperclips, and have a measuring hunt. Instruct every student to find something in the room that is one paperclip long, then an object that is two paperclips long, etc. Creating a class chart about the objects the children find and displaying it in the classroom will give students a visual reminder of the measurement activity.
You might also begin measurement activities by guiding children to measure items in the classroom with familiar materials such as teddy bear counters or dominoes. Have them count the number of dominoes it takes to go across the table or the length of a book. Then have them compare their answer to another child's answer. Is it the same? Is it close? The two numbers should match or be close. Discuss this with the children and allow them to ask questions to encourage further exploration.
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Math (Continued)
Allow children to choose what they want to use as their measuring tool preferably something they enjoy and can manipulate easily. Help children pick items close to the same size. Then have them place them end to end to measure various objects. Again: help children use their counting skills as they use their measuring tool to measure an object. By allowing children to choose what they want to use as a measuring tool and what they want to measure, they will be more likely to enjoy learning as well as retain what they learn.
Explain to the children that they can use their bodies...or parts of their bodies... to measure things. Ask children to estimate how many hands or arms something will be and record on a sheet of chart paper the different items children choose to measure. Include their estimates of how long, wide, tall, etc. an item is and then the actual measurements. For example, ask children how many "hands long" they think the tables are. Record their estimate or guess on the chart. Then, ask them to line up their hands length-wise on the table. Count and record the actual hand length of the table. Next, help them compare their estimate with their actual answer. Ask them to measure the width of the table. Estimate and then conduct the actual measurement. Are all the classroom tables the same size? Can they think of other ways to measure the tables with their bodies? How many hands high is the table from the floor? How many feet or bodies long are the tables? Encourage children to estimate and then compare their measurements. Activities involving predictions and estimates help stimulate higher levels of thinking in children and give them a better understanding of a concept.
The most important thing about teaching any math concept to a child is to keep it fun. Research shows that when children have fun learning, they make their work their play. Developmentally appropriate math activities develop self -confidence, self-reliance and build the firm foundation in math that all children need in today's technology driven world.
Refer to Georgia's Pre-K Standards and the WSS P-4 book for more ideas for helping children learn about measurement.

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CLASS

This month we are spotlighting getting the correct answer.

the second CLASS dimension, Teachers give students specific

Quality of Feedback, included information about why answers

under the Instructional Support are correct or incorrect rather

domain.

than telling students good job

or great work.

Quality of Feedback assesses

the degree to which the teacher Teachers should also recognize

provides feedback that expands and praise children's efforts and

learning and encourages active encourage them to continue

participation. The indicators in- working or completing a task.

cluded under Quality of Feed- For example, when students are

back are Scaffolding, Feedback building a block structure, the

Loops, Prompting Thought Pro- teacher may say, I see how

cesses, Providing Information, hard you are working on your

and Encouragement and Affir- building. Let me know if you

mation. Students learn more

need any help. Teachers

when feedback is given that ex- should engage in feedback

pands their knowledge or builds loops. Some of the best feed-

upon a performance of a task. back occurs when teachers con-

Effective feedback helps stu-

tinue to ask follow up questions

.

dents come to a deeper understanding of concepts and keeps

and engage students in conversation. Throughout the day,

them motivated and engaged in teachers should focus on the

lessons and activities.

process of learning. When stu-

dents provide a correct answer,

Teachers at the high end of

ask follow up questions to help

Quality of Feedback intentionally students obtain a deeper under-

look for opportunities to provide standing of the concepts.

meaningful feedback to children

thereby creating multiple learn- Continue to look for more excit-

ing opportunities throughout the ing news about the CLASS each

day. These teachers provide

month. To learn more about

hints and assistance and ask

CLASS, visit

students to explain their thinking www.classobservation.com.

rather than simply focusing on

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Assessment

Call the BFTS office and PreK Consultant on duty at 404656-5957. Pre-K Consultant contact information also can be found on the website.
www.decal.ga.gov

Teachers should continue to observe and record brief observational notes, collect work samples, take photos, and complete matrices. Teachers working with WSO should be sure they are classifying at all three levels domain, functional component, and indicator. Teachers completing WSS should ensure that photos have brief descriptors while all teachers should ensure that notes, photos, and work samples are labeled with the name, date, and domain as well as the predictable skills or behaviors.
Review your spreadsheets to determine where you need to gather additional documentation. Assign small groups based on the areas you identified or the skill level. Purposely plan an assessment activity that will provide you with the documentation needed.
As the year comes to an end, teachers will review and give Final Ratings during weeks 17 and 18. WSS teachers using the spreadsheet should transfer these ratings to the Developmental Checklist in ink. All 55 indicators should have supporting documentation and evidence. There should be no notations of Did not observe or non-rated indicator. WSO teachers will complete the final Spring Rating on the WSS Developmental Checklist, print a hard copy, and place it in children's . individual portfolios.
WSS teachers will complete the Progress Reports and conduct family conferences during which time you will obtain parent/family signatures. WSO teachers will complete the Narrative Summary Report online and print a hard copy for family conferences where you also will obtain signatures. If parents/families do not respond to your good faith efforts for family conferences, document your efforts, and mail the final progress report to them by a traceable means.

PRE-K TEACHING TIMES