Journal 6
Grade K Time 12:00 – 4:00 Date 10/12/2012
List What occurred during the time you are at your school? What are all the things that happen in the time frame you are in your school?
• Reading time “Bats”
• Bat Books
• Poems
• Bat Books
• Bus time/free time
• Core teacher meeting (about reading proficiency, splitting students up into groups, and dividing them among the teachers.)
Describe 1 item from the list, in GREAT detail – who, what, when, where, how, why
Today we had another themed day. The theme was bats. Mrs. Huseby felt it was time for me to teach an entire unit. I got to read a science book called “Bats” which led to a fairly long discussion with the learners about bats and how they see, eat, and live.
After the discussion, I led the learners back to their desks and taught them to create a six page bat book. It was an art/science project. We did the first two pages before poems and the last four after to split up the work a little.
Bats are a great topic to cover during October in Kindergarten (being its Halloween). They seem to be interesting to nearly every learner. The themed day focuses the learner. However, making the bat book seemed to be too long of a project for some.
I had a few learners that were complaining about the amount of pages they needed to work on and I have to agree. The average Kindergartner has an attention span of five minutes. This project took almost half of a day. I feel the book is a great idea for a week long project. Perhaps a page a day in the morning, when the learners are first coming to class, with a final extra page on Friday and then putting it together.
The experience to take a unit and teach was priceless. Also, it was a lot of fun. On a side note, today we had two learners who each lost their first tooth. This is a huge rite of passage for the learner and creates an environment of pride throughout the entire classroom. Having two in one day was awesome. I find it funny that both times every student had to go check out the lost tooth. It is that big of a deal to the learners. Overall it was a great day.
