Weekly Kindergarten team planning and shared plans on Google Drive. 

K-C  Weekly Online Planner - Shared with K Team , substitute teachers and TAs.

Conferring involves having a conversation with students about their reading, writing AND math.

Not talking to students, but talking with them, listening to them, and discussing their work with them to differentiate instruction and build a relationship with each student.

This year I am going to work on making conferring part of each day by committing to one or two conferences a day.

Key Elements in Conferring 

• Express a clear purpose

• Provide a predictable structure

• Inform and differentiate instruction

• Monitor student growth

• Provide constructive feedback

Students need to think:

• What was I supposed to learn?

• Did I learn it?

• What questions do I still have?

This formative assessment helps both students and teachers  understand where they are at in their learning and teaching.  The more students learn to do this and the more techniques they have to self-assess, the more likely they are to inherently do it on their own.  Kindergarten students need the of use of clear, explicit language combined with visuals  in order to attend to the complex concept of self-assessment. In order to begin encouraging the ideals of a growth mindset, it is crucial to include a Not Yet section in order to set goals while also building  confidence.

A writing conference takes place during independent writing time. It provides the opportunity to quickly assess my students’ needs. Then I can identify teaching points and provide writing instruction on one of those teaching points. The goal is to help create better writers. 

I am working on reminding my teaching aides to remember that a conference is not about changing the writing, it is about changing the writer. In other words, we will not be correcting their writing, but rather supporting the individual student to write better next time. 

As an educator, I strive to develop an empathetic and understanding rapport with my students. The individual interests, ages, abilities, and challenges in a classroom create a whole-class personality. That personality will shift as the students who contribute to it grow and change, both individually and as a group.  Yardsticks by Chip Woods has been an invaluable tool in my ever-growing understanding of developmentally appropriate pedagogy. This comprehensive guide has helped me better understand students’ social and academic behavior through a developmental lens.  With a list of birthdays and Chip Wood’s Yardsticks, I can plan for and respond to the specific developmental changes in a Kindergarten class. Kindergarten is a unique grade in that is is usually a child’s first formal school experience. It typically includes children from ages 4 - 6, as well as a myriad of academic abilities, from children just learning letter names and sounds to those reading chapter books. 

Knowing the dominant chronological age of the students in my class allows me to make predictions about their developmental needs throughout the year and plan accordingly. I organized my class list chronologically, compared those ages with developmental stages, and then consider whether adjustments in my planning, approach, or even classroom space and organization could be helpful to individual students and the class as a whole.