My Experience and Reflection on Teaching Kindergarten Social Studies

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1. Instructional Context-My class includes 25 five and six year old kindergartners; 24 African-American students and 1 Caucasian student. I have 11 girls and 14 boys in my full-day kindergarten class where I teach language arts, math, science, social studies, and health. My class is a typical kindergarten group, in that they are very active and learn best by doing. They are a very talkative group and are in constant competition to share their ideas and to have "their turn" to participate. I have some particularly active boys, one of which is on medication for ADHD, another who has autism, but is currently not receiving special services, and a 3rd who came to me from another district's developmentally delayed kindergarten classroom. The majority of my students can sit still for 20-30 minutes but I have 5 boys who have trouble sitting for just 5 minutes without being disruptive or inattentive. I am challenged to constantly engage my students in their learning, rather than "feed" them information. My classes' abilities range from high to very low. The highest of my students can read, speak in full descriptive sentences, respond creatively, and appropriately to thought provoking questions. Whereas, my lowest students know only a couple letters of the alphabet, have difficulty coming up with meaningful sentences and often answer questions with statements that have no bearing on the subject matter. My biggest challenge when planning for this period of instruction was to find a way to actively involve all of my students and offer success for everyone, regardless of skill level. I decided to have stations where 4 students, at a time, would be engaged in stimulating activities and where there would be very little "wait"... ... middle of paper ... ...memory. Since this unit was taught, I purchased a "real" rain stick. Also, I plan to acquire authentic animal hide, jewelry, and moccasins. I would also like to visit our state museum as a field experience, where there is an extensive display of Native American villages and artifacts. During the building of the tee-pee, I would like to give the students more autonomy to see how they would manage without adult help. Without adult intrusion, the students would have greater opportunity to develop leadership and cooperation skills. In addition, I will focus more on integrating the concept of the similarities of between any Native American tribe and our classroom community. Our classroom is like a Native American tribe in that in order to build a thriving, safe, and healthy community, every individual has a job to do to and they must work together toward that goal.

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