This past week Josh, Caitlin, and I had a wonderful experience teaching in a Kindergarten classroom with 18 diverse students. We worked with our cooperating teacher to create challenging and engaging lessons based off of the farm theme for the week. With the aide of Pinterest and our creative minds we were able to form learning centers, worksheets, videos, and games that the students loved. One of the biggest highlights of the lessons was showing a video from Caitlin’s farm. Caitlin, Jill, and I visited the Bonde farm where they have thousands of pigs and filmed short clips so that students could experience life on the farm. The students and our cooperating teacher loved it and asked wonderful questions. The whole week was an enjoyable learning experience. We were all able to learn from our mistakes and build off of each other to succeed. The six short days in the Kindergarten classroom reiterated my love for Kindergartners, and got me really excited to be in control of my own class in the future!
I would just like to say that Kindergarten practicum was a success across the entirety of our whole methods class. It was wonderful to be able to implement learning centers everyday in class and to see just how engaged all of the kids were in all the activities that we presented them with. And I completely agree with the wonderful resources that you listed Casey. With the newfound tool of Pinterest I have found that I can find a multitude of creative ideas on top of our own. I really enjoyed the environment that we were placed in at South Elementary, and I’m looking forward to being able to use some of the ideas we generated in the first grade classroom at St. James!
Thanks Casey! 🙂 I completely agree. I was a little nervous to start Kindergarten practicum because I have almost no experience with this age grade in the schools, but this past week has been a blast. I have definitely changed my view on lower elementary, particularly Kindergarten. I have always thought of myself as more of an upper elementary teacher because I have more experience in this area and have really enjoyed this age group, but I really enjoyed these five and six year olds. I could definitely see myself teaching Kindergarten! It was a lot of work, but their excitement and energy was so much fun to work with. Practicum has been a great opportunity for all of us to really spend time with a variety of diverse students. I’m excited to begin our practicum experience in St. James with a different grade!