Over the course of instruction, I have come to a better understanding of my teaching practice. I now more fully understand the multiple learning theories that I incorporate in my classroom environment. I firmly believe that kindergarten students learn by being engaged in their learning environment. My goal is to establish and maintain a positive and productive learning environment where every child’s needs are met and learning styles are encouraged. Lever-Duffy and McDonald (2008) mention that
Kindergarten students come to class with a great deal of prior knowledge and experiences. My goal is to continue to grow student’s prior knowledge by building new constructs and connections through our experiences together as we explore and learn new concepts. My kindergarten students are exposed to and involved in hands-on activities, song, movement, role-playing, whole group interaction, small group interaction, independent learning, journaling, and presentations. Kindergarten students are eager to be active in their learning experiences. Since kindergarten students are very visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learners, instruction is designed to encourage their learning preferences. Learning strategies include singing songs to learn counting or spelling words, using think-pair-share to develop ideas and conversation (cooperative learning), and visuals (non-linguistic representations) to encourage understanding.
Our use of technology includes using our three classroom computers for independent exploration, streaming videos from United Streaming, interactive use of the smartboard and websites, and our classroom blog with our podcast. My intention is to continue to develop and refine the classroom blog each year. Students will use voicethread to talk to their work or to generate a conversation on a certain topic, such as “What can you do to help our earth?”. I plan on using a digital camera more effectively and incorporate pictures of more students engaged in activities on the blog. In addition, we will post our student created artifacts such as our zoo dioramas, recycled art butterflies and caterpillars, findings and results of science experiments, and our explanation of various math strategies. By using these technologies, students will be interested and excited about their learning experiences. It is my hope that they will develop an intrinsic interest in learning and begin their quest as life-long learners.
My long-term goals are to continue to grow my integration of technology in my classroom and to encourage other teachers to do the same. I had been using technology in the classroom, but know feel that I can more effectively engage students with the use of technology as a learning tool. My plans include using technologies such as the smartboard with students interaction more regularly, engaging students in more inquiry based instruction and using the internet (with my direction) to explore concepts, and using our classroom blog to interact with parents. I will be actively involved and providing guidance and direction in all phases.
As part of the kindergarten team, it is my goal to encourage other kindergarten teachers to expand their use of technology in the classroom. We can share ideas in our grade level meeting and talk about student responses and results. By working collaboratively with my colleagues we can continue to develop our teaching practice and provide a positive and productive learning environment for our students using tools that both inspire and encourage student learning experiences.
References:
Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education,
Inc., custom ed.).
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