KindergartenWorks: kindergarten assessment - feeling like a "real" teacher

Differentiating my math instruction has really changed the way I teach and my entire schedule! After our first nine weeks, I completely flipped our classroom schedule. Honestly, this was difficult, since I am such a creature of habit (much like our kinders). I talked about the change the entire week before it was going to happen, which I think helped out my kinders as much as it did me. The transition has gone fantastic and our daily schedule is going great! While I do personally work every day on sticking to the time slots I have given myself, we're making it work!

Another change has been how I give assessments. I told Mr. KindergartenWorks this week that "I feel like a real teacher." By that I meant the archetypal teacher who grades things all throughout the quarter and not just in one chunk. Prior to the common core standards, I would generally save my assessments until the end of the quarter. Did it leave a lot of time for re-assessing? No. Did it give me any pre-assessment ideas of where to take my kinders? Nope. So, why did I do it this way? Well, because that's the way it had been done and I couldn't find another way to manage fitting it in. With the sheer number of standards that I need to check in on now, I had to find a new way!

So why has differentiating math changed it all? Because I now devote over an hour to meeting my kinders needs every day in math. I know them as little thinkers and have small groups every day and 1:1 time to assess them. Previously, I could've only said that I knew them as little readers and writers. It has been rewarding hearing my students talk about "checking their work," "showing their thinking" and "keep on going."

This week, I am checking in with my kinders on the letter identification and sound production. I tested K.RF.1.d-3,4. Identify orally all uppercase and lowercase letters in random order and K.RF.3.a-1. Produce 50 percent of the primary or most frequent sounds for each consonant. I use the KinderTrio assessment packs to keep track of it all, and reported their child's progress to parents.

I knew my kinders would score well on the identification part but was unsure of how many sounds we've come to master. We've had great results! I am allowing my kinders who aced it to begin taking over doing our daily alphabet chart as the "teacher" and those who are so close are pumped about earning the privilege. They have officially taken q,y,u, and x on as a personal challenge to overcome! We are edifying those who have masted these standards by having their names displayed in our classroom.

I also have posted up our counting to 60, 100 and zipping coats and tying shoes posters. They are super excited about using each other as tutors, resources and practice partners for learning these skills. And as for counting, my lowest kinders see it as a positive thing knowing where they are at and how far they have to go to meet their goal for this quarter of counting to 60.

In math, I was able to assess K.NBT.1.a,b Compose and decompose numbers from 11-19 from a group of ten ones and additional ones using objects. My kinders did fantastic! With only one not passing, I'm ecstatic! My highest kinder group worked on numbers 11-99 and my lowest group focused mainly on 11-15 because they also need practice with recognizing those numbers. Over the next few weeks, we'll get fluent in this skill as we use "Hurry Up Reindeer" to make 11-19 using glitter ice cubes to feed hungry reindeer and playdough to further practice decomposition.