Teaching with Intention: Chapter 4

Hi Everyone!

Tonight I am linking up with Schroeder Shenanigans in Second , Positively Learning, and Kindergarten Smorgasboard for chapter 4 of Teaching with Intention. Our wonderful hosts gave us two questions to help guide our thoughts on this chapter.

 

This has been a very eye opening book for me and this chapter is no exception. Thinking about my classroom culture was interesting. Looking back at this school year I don't feel like I displayed my thinking in all areas like I should have been. Reading and Math are the areas where I share the most and where I encourage students to share the most. We discuss stories and what we think about them as we break them apart. We talk through different ways to solve a problem or what tools we can use to solve a problem. We write things down a lot in our journals or on our desks. Most of those are not displayed so this next year I will need to make sure that more of these moments are displayed in the classroom for them. Only a few activities each month were posted in the classroom. All the other subjects will need to be improved upon when it comes to more thinking being displayed by myself and my kiddos.

To help us with displaying our thinking and our students thinking Miller gives a lot of scenario examples. I loved it. In here examples she words everything so wonderfully and she makes them think through everything and say their thoughts out loud. I also loved how she handled the attention seeker students. I have met the sweet kiddos who will be in my class already and I can see a few who have the potential to be that attention seeker who will say anything whether it is on topic or not. Asking students to provide evidence for their statements is perfect. I wish I could say that I had been smart enough in the past to do that with those attention seeker students. I believe that I responded mostly with a little frustration because they were not paying attention. That will change this year.

Throughout this next school year I will also make sure that I am present more. I walk around observing and helping pretty often. I am rarely at my desk, but there are still too many times that I can remember where the assessments, meetings, tests, technology problems, and all the other craziness distracted me from being present with my students 100% of the time. I think this will be the hardest thing for me to work on because I can be easily distracted with the tech issues that my classroom has and unfortunately there are a lot. It will be worth it in the end to make sure that I am present more. It will help me display my thoughts to my students more often when they are partnered or in groups. 

 

During our reading time we discuss the stories. We stop every couple of pages and start by discussing Who and What. From there we talk about why we think things are happening, what we think will happen next, what characters are thinking, etc. I love hearing their comments. Some are very out there and some are really in depth for such young minds. It makes the stories more interesting to me. This is probably where the most discussion happens, well here and devotion/Bible story times.

We also discuss a lot in math. I had the privilege of teaching Singapore math for a year and fell in love. It opened up a whole new way of teaching math. I loved how much it made the kids and myself think about the methods of solving and how many different ways a problem could be solved. I think it made kids more open and creative in the way they look at math. I no longer teach Singapore but I still use a lot of the strategies in my room which leads to lots of discussions on how things can be solved, number talks, etc.

Other subjects are not as open as reading and math but discussion do happen is smaller capacities. This will definitely be something to work on for this next school year. 

Thanks for reading my thoughts on chapter 4. I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Ashley