Who am I?
Kiloran Fensom
Senior Kindergarten Teacher
The Sterling Hall School
Action Plan Question:
How might we develop successful Senior Kindergarten communicators who effectively use multiple modalities to communicate ideas coherently?
So what?
Teacher view:
- Direct instruction literacy program (UFLI) based on the Science of Reading
- There is no “Science of Writing” so there is no understanding or roadmap of how to teach grammar
- Took a large portion of our language time and cut out our recent addition of story building and writing workshop
- The program did incorporate writing in terms of weekly dictations
- UFLI seemed to go slow for most of the year and then really sped up near the end
- our students lacked oral language skills such as forming sentences with proper verb tenses and use of prepositions.
Student view:
I want to tell fun stories and share cool things I know.
What did we do?
- We introduced grammar constructs such as verb tenses when those heart words were introduced
- Writing themes came from the co-created drama centre, their weekend experiences, or our inquiry units.
- Building experiences (a combination of Story Workshop and StoryMaking) to build structures based on a theme, encourage labelling and use these as inspiration for more writing.
- Different text forms such as posters
- created a writing rubric for stories which aligned with the Ontario Writing Assessment (OWA) and our report card
The impact
- Student’s stories were coherent, on theme, and used more of the phonics taught
- Teachers have more confidence in marking and speaking to the students progress and next steps
What did I learn?
Cohort 21 process
- How to break down a problem
- Focus on what is within my sphere of influence
Project related
- Beginning of SK focus on oral language
- Weekend stories
- Active drama games
- Word games
- Puppet shows
- Continue to follow students-led themes
- Weekend adventures
- Inquiry themes
Moving forward
- Language-based morning circle once or twice a week
- Practice more oral and writing literacy skills in small literacy groups
Hi Kiloran, I think what your attempting to do will show huge impacts during the latter years at Sterling. The “what” you are doing is impressive with such an early stage learn but the “how” you deliver it is probably the most important part. I’ve not seen you in the classroom but I have spent a considerable amount of time admiring the way you interact with our group in Cohort. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and listen to how you run your class because your personality must be dynamite with those young kids. If only I could go back in time and be a student in your class.
Bob
@kfensom Congratulations on completing your action plan and the end of the beginning of your cohort 21 journey. I hope you enjoyed the process and that you will continue to apply what you learned to your next classroom challenge. Consider coming back as a coach next year!
Please take a moment to fill in this exit ticket so we can continue to improve the Cohort 21 experience for next year and beyond.
Exit Ticket – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0EbVOSezsi3yyVhdupV_FRz81YOP3_criZVZZuiCDzFV1kA/viewform