Blog Post #1, N.Woodruff

My placement is a Kindergarten classroom at Wilcox Elementary School in Holt, Michigan. The room is set-up with a large carpet for the children to sit on and 3 tables (green table, blue table and red table). Each table seats 8 students, with 24 students in the class total. The students are disciplined by a colored-ticket routine. After 3 warnings of bad behavior, the student is asked to move their ticket from green to yellow, then yellow to red. Students may bring their tickets back to green with good behavior, but if they have either a yellow or red ticket at the end of the day, portions of their recess will be docked. In terms of their daily routines, literacy centers are run first thing in the morning and large-group math instructions/lessons are run during the afternoon. Occasionally, there will be a math center integrated in the morning. The students seem to enjoy playing with shapes and colors, which was noticeable by their excitement for the wood pieces activity. This activity requires each student to identify a given a number, count that number of wood pieces, then create a design with the pieces. They also have a fun time counting 'Giggles', the caterpillar of numbers that grows one circle for every day they are in school. In the morning, the students count Giggles by 1's, 5's or 10's. When discussing upcoming math lessons, my mentor teacher showed great excitement for the 100th day of school. I am also looking forward to that day.