Monday, July 14, 2014

Diggin' Into Next Year- Beginning of the year

      I noticed that I was doing all of the work for my kinders during calendar time. I sang the songs, asked and changed the date, changed the place value chart, counted to a 100, asked about the weather etc. 
That's why I decided to create a morning work routine where students would become more independent.


      utilize our time in the morning. I ended up on Teachers pay Teachers  and found more than 1,000 products for morning work!My search was narrowed to less than 5 when I discover that they were not available in Spanish (at the time). 

     All of my instruction is in Spanish. It took a whole year to make but I can finally say that it is ready.I created a morning work packet from September through June.
 I also created it the English version for my team. 
         This is how I use it in my classroom. My  students have different jobs each week. One of their jobs is "teacher assistant", he/she sings all of the songs (good morning, days of the week, colors etc) and the "police officer" goes through our class rules.  
I then review the calendar and read the instructions for that day on the morning work routine.
Here is a short video explaining Mi trabajo de la maƱana


       I still meet with my students during calendar time, that is something I will never change. I need to activate prior knowledge, establish a routine, talk to my students and prepare my students for the day.
At the beginning of the year my students need a lot of scaffolding to complete the morning work routine. I decided to practice with them for a week so they could get used to this activity. Eventually, they learn how to do it all by themselves. 
You could get each month separate, by bundles (3 months), or buy the whole year and save some $!