I have now subbed in a classroom that has around 15 kids of ages 3, 4 and 5. Think of it as having 5 kids of each age in one classroom. Wow, differentiation at its finest. It is unbelievable not just the different ages of students, but also their academic and social levels. There are students that are learning how to write their first names mixed in with students that are beginning to read books and write stories. Yesterday I got a good understanding of how one could tackle a classroom with so many different levels, but one thing I noticed right away is that it is hard work. As a teacher with so many academic levels, one could just teach to the middle/average student, but the lower and higher students would not receive the attention they truly need. Instead this teacher looks at each individual students' level and teaches to where they are at academically. This means that there are two different spelling word lists, three different levels of math and 3+ different types of homework! Throw in the mix that your class looks different every single day, meaning that the kindergartners come to school every day (by the way it's a full day of school) while the 3 and 4 year olds come 3-5 days a week depending on what fits their parent's schedule and their parent's belief on how often they should be in school. This is an amazing situation that I believe shouldn't be happening because of how different the ages are academically and socially, but if I were put into this situation I would have to roll with the punches just like this teacher.
As I said, I saw a bit yesterday how the classroom actually functions on a day to day basis and it is a lot of work. In the morning they do a group time, which is just like our calendar math, where you talk about the date, a pattern, money etc. For math (1 hour) the teacher does a 'Daily 3 Math' which is very very similar to Math Workshop I did in the 2nd grade classroom. It's a 15 minute rotation where the students go to the same three rotations, 1. Working with the Teacher 2. An activity related to their current unit 3. A math game or activity. Luckily, this teacher has two para pros/helpers that come in the morning to help out because I don't know if this would be possible without the help. These kids are too young to be able to stay motivated on their own. Personally I would have a couple minutes where the students could just share what they did during their Daily 3 or something they did just as a reflection period.
Next the students have a literacy block (1 hour) where they are grouped in 3-4 students where the groups go to four different centers (there are five groups). The center they do every day is work with the teacher, where they work at their level on different literacy skills (because there are four rotations a day and five groups two groups meet with the teacher at once, but they are all the same level) while the other students are doing different centers. Not one group does the same center that day, so there are literally 15+ centers to set up or do every day. The centers range from writing, listening, writing the room to an art center, playdoh/water table where they practice writing/making words to games, lacing and computers. I like how the students do different centers so they could never become bored with one center because they only do it once a week, but that is a lot of setting up and prepping for the teacher. The only change I would make is to have 6-8 centers set up where a couple of the groups would do the same center during the day, so that it is not as much work for the teacher. The way students transition from one center to another is by listening for their teacher to ring the wind chime in their room. They know when they hear this that they need to freeze, listen for directions, and get ready to move to another center. Once again their are 2 para pros helping out in the morning during this time, which some centers are impossible to do without the help of an adult.
Because of the huge gaps between the students by age and academics, I don't know if teaching could be done any other way other than centers or rotations. You can't teach to a full group all the time because some of the material would be too hard or too easy for a good chunk of the kids. By having meaningful centers or rotations the students are being taught to their needs and students are not working on one activity for a long period of time where they would become bored or off task. I think also it is important to have math and literacy taught in the morning because that is when these young students have the most attention because many of them begin to shut down or lose focus in the afternoon, since they are there a full day and that a long time for some students. There are definitely some good things I took away from this classroom and enjoy being there to impact those young kids.
