Speakers: 

Dr. Cristina Compton and G. Faith Little 

from the Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) at Teacher College

Facilitators: 

Kristina Beck, Trish Iasiello, William Yang

The purpose of this year-long course was to provide teachers with the opportunity to research and develop a new topic or theme. The Greenacres Kindergarten Team  applied this project-based learning approach in education to experiment with our Kaleidoscope garden study. 

K-CD weaved the garden unit of study with our science and information literacy units in order to learn more on the efficacy of this approach.  This course allowed us the time, space, support, and permission to design, implement, and experiment.  

The course was divided into two parts:

Part 1: Action Research in Curriculum (Design)

Part 2:  Study Group and Lesson Study (Implementation)

We met monthly as a full class and in small group meetings from February to June 2022.

After developing our PBL units, we formed study/collaborative groups which supported and provided feedback to one another while we implemented our units. 

The photos/videos and student work presented in the link are from K-CD’s garden visits, writing assignments and discussions. 

Introducing REVEAL Math!

After participating in the year-long Math Pilot Program last year, I am excited to be working again with Nancy Pavia  and Vivian Robert the Math Collegial Group this year, as well as attending team and planning sessions throughout the year.

Throughout the year, K-C will be encouraged to notice and wonder about the math of different situations, to talk about their mathematical ideas, and to reflect on their learning  about mathematics.

We Are Readers !

My biggest hope in the beginning of Kindergarten is for all the children to begin to build a sense of their own reading identity. If you can read your name, you are a reader!

“Yes, I am a reader!” they will say emphatically by the time the first reading unit wraps up. 

Most children at this time of year, pretend read, although I do not refer to it as pretend. They will have authors they love, they will have books they call their favorites, and they will have friends they gather with to look at the newest addition to our classroom library or to muse over the illustrations in a book. The children will see, experience, and understand how books are filled with information and stories that they can read.

We Are Writers !
We launched our writing workshop unit of study by telling the children that they will all be writers this year.  

If you can write your name, you are a writer!

We began by showing them how we as writers, think of something important that has happened to us in our lives and then draw and write about it.  We may first tell a story only in pictures, slowly adding letters, then words and later sentences.

We Are Storytellers !

We share our story idea, friends ask us questions : Who, Where, What . We add these details to our writing,

Weather & Climate

In this unit, we studied how the Sun plays the important role of warming the earth. 

We explored how to gather information to predict and prepare for severe weather. 

BIG SCIENCE WORDS

 In this unit, we used words that are unique to Science.   

 We started to connect to the “Big Science Words.”

Data – facts and statistics about a topic for reference or analysis; can be quantitative (numbers) or qualitative (characterizes but does not measure.)

Meteorologist - an expert in or student of meteorology; a weather forecaster. 

Prediction - a statement about what will happen or might happen in the future. 

Severe Weather - any dangerous meteorological phenomena with the potential to cause damage, serious social disruption, or cause injury to human life. 

Trend - general direction in which something is developing or changing.