EDE 4504 REFLECTIVE BLOG 4 & EDP 3273 REFLECTION 7

The management routine that I chose for my fourth reflective blog is lead a community building activity. My CT tries to lead a community building activity at least once a week. This routine requires the teacher to control the students while keeping everyone engaged and involved. The activity I observed is a part of the Kagan structure. They did a rally robin share about Halloween candy and costumes. This consists of the students giving each other one-word answers about the prompt, going back and forth until the designated time is up. The students were still at their tables finishing their breakfast when the CT got their attention by saying “Class, class!” The students all responded by saying “Yes, yes!” She said that they had a few minutes to finish eating, then to clean up, and go sit on the carpet quietly until it is time to begin. The students did exactly as she said and all sat and waited to receive further instruction. The CT walked over to the rug and told everyone to quietly stand up. She explained that they were going to be doing a rally robin and she began giving the instructions. When the teacher turned off the music, students were to choose the person nearest to them to be their partner. They will go back and forth giving answers about the prompt that is given. The children understood the concept well. She decided to play music while the students walk around the carpet for this activity. This was to keep the students from choosing their friend(s) that they talk to every day. The spooky Halloween music began to play and the students began giggling and walking/skipping around the carpet. She let the music play for around thirty second and made sure the usual students that bunch up were far apart when she stopped the music. Once the music stopped, the students began to panic and look for a partner. One student even walked to the other side of the carpet to pair up with his friend. The CT saw it happen and separated the two. She re-explained the rules of how the rally robin worked and gave the students the prompt of Halloween candies. I heard many answers such as skittles, snickers, candy corn, nerds, etc. The CT allowed the students to share for thirty seconds. Once the time was up, the students were directed to start walking around the carpet as she started the music back up. Another thirty seconds went by and she stopped the music again. The CT told the students to share Halloween costume ideas. The students began to rally robin items such as policeman, fireman, princess, ninja turtle, etc. until the time was up. The CT told them to sit down on the carpet because it was time for the aid to begin the Morning Meeting. The impact this routine had on the students was that it made them open up and start their day in a very social way. They also had to talk to other students they usually wouldn’t. The CT warned me about the students that will try to group up and be together, even when they are supposed to be mingling with others.

For some reason, I was having a hard time trying to choose what activity I wanted to do with the students. My CT reminded me that the next week was red ribbon week and we both wanted the students to be involved. I knew the school was having a door decorating contest and that is when it hit me. I wanted all the students to help with the door decorating and talk to them about what red ribbon week is. Instead of explaining to my kindergartners that red ribbon week is about saying no to drugs, I tied it in with how we can be respectful of our friends and others. This is where my CT and I got the idea about HERO. Helping Everyone Respect Others. I told the students we would be coloring super heroes to show everyone that we can be super students. I told them when I passed out the pictures, I wanted everyone to wait for further instructions. I explained that we were going to all color this picture together and I expected everyone to participate. I told them to get out their pencil boxes and to only use crayons on this assignment. We usually have problems with students wanting to use markers so I stressed the use of crayons greatly. Some of the students did not have all the crayons that they wanted to use and one student started to complain to the CT and I about this. I told this student, “What is one way that we can solve this problem?” To my surprise, the ALL the students started asking each other to borrow the crayons they did not have. I was such an amazing thing to see. As they were drawing, I told them again how we could all be super heroes by being respectful to our friends and other. I asked them what are some examples of being respectful. I had the kids do a "timed pair share" which is a part of the Kagan structure. I gave each student thirty seconds to talk to their partner. The kids were so excited to do this activity together. My CT got even more creative than myself and took pictures of the students faces. We cut out the faces on the super heroes and put each childs face on their drawing. We did not win the contest but the students had a great time doing this together. My performance of this routine barely impacted my students. They view me as a teacher in their classroom now. They are getting better with respecting me at all times and it’s so fun to get a glimpse into how it is going to be in my own classroom. I got my desired result from this community building activity. I even noticed the students being more respectful than usual when sharing crayons and how they were speaking to each other. This showed me that they were truly listening to what I was saying. The developmental level of my students impacted the results I observed by seeing that they were so into the activity. At this age, students are so into expressing themselves and creativity. This made me feel like I chose the perfect activity for them. During this management routine/lesson, I completed FEAPs 2a, 2c and 2f. I completed 2a by managing the resources of this activity for the students and having them complete it in a timely manner. I completed 2c by conveying high expectations to all students when talking about completing the assignment. Lastly, I completed 2f by maintaining a climate of openness, inquiry, fairness, and support when discussing respect with the students. I allowed them to ask as many questions as they needed and explained anything and everything that they had questions about.

Performance praise is important in the lives of kindergartners. According to EdPsych Modules, “Performance praise (or outcome praise) is an evaluation of the end product. Researches refer to process or performance praise as informational praise because it provides students with information about what they have done well and what to do the next time” (Durwin & Reese-Webber, 2017, p. 283). These students need to be reassured that what they are doing is acceptable and right in the eyes of their teacher. I have really noticed this in my classroom. The children hate to disappoint. How does lack of performance praise shape the classroom environment and relationship between the students and teacher? Another thing I noticed was how involved and intrinsically motivated my students were by this task. This is called flow. Flow is defined as, “a feeling of intrinsic enjoyment and absorption in a task that is challenging and rewarding, making a person feel at one with the task” (Durwin & Reese-Webber, 2017, p. 286). Usually the students try to ask for tickets based off their good work but they loved this activity and how it made them feel so much more. I believe this because I allowed the students to control how they did this activity. The only rule I gave them was that they had to use crayons instead of markers or color pencils. It is so cool to see how students can be motivated intrinsically with a little community building activity such as this. What are other activities that are intrinsically motivating to students?

The most important thing I learned through engaging in this routine is that these students love to be creative and do things together as a class. This is the essence of community building. I made this assignment extremely simple by having them color the picture and talk to their table about what being respectful means. The thing that went well was the students were asking each other for help and to borrow crayons. This is when I realized how much these students loved to help out their friends. I was not expecting this, but now I know how giving they are towards each other. The thing that I didn’t think went so well was trying to get everything on the door in a reasonable time. Everything went well with the children but not with my CT and I. We had this great idea of how to do this but it took a lot longer than we anticipated. We did not take the wind into consideration at first, but after a lot of hard work, I believe we achieved our desired result. I believe this routine did meet the developmental need of my students. I would engage in the management routine differently next time by moving the students around and having them work with different students than the ones just at their table. This would help work on their social skills.

Durwin, C., & Reese-Weber, M. (2017). EdPsych (6th ed., pp. 283, 286). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

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