Daily Lessons Kindergarten

Daily Lessons
Kindergarten

The routine for designing a day’s sequence of lessons in kindergarten is the same as designing a sequence of lessons (a unit) in any other knowledge system.

Guidelines

1.Examine resources for selecting two things: (a) the subject matterAREAS you will teach = curriculum strands, knowledge systems, or “competency goals” in a standard course of study; and (b)specific knowledge items (sometimes called “objectives” in a standard course of study) within each strand or competency goal.

Curriculum goal, strand, knowledge system = math

Specific math knowledge items; e.g., rote counting, rational
counting, group counting, addition

Remember, if you are teaching tool skills and tightly-coupled knowledge systems (language, reading, math, basic science), focused, explicit, systematic instruction works best.

However, plan to use Socratic instruction(guided discussion) and discovery learning (e.g., kids observe and write findings) to apply their tool skills (e.g., math) and when teaching loosely coupled systems such as social studies and literature.
a. NC Standard Course of Study for kindergarten. Many objectives are vague. They use words such as “demonstrate” or “understand.” If an objective is vague, do this. Ask, “What sorts of things could a kid do if a kid knew this item?” For example, an objective says, “Student demonstrates knowledge of the connection between letters and sounds.” Translate this into:
(1) “When I point to a letter and say ‘What sound?’ the student says the correct sound
within 3 seconds.” And
(2) “When I point to a letter among an array of letters and nonletters (e.g., a, m, a, r, a,
m, s, r, square, triangle, cat face) and I ask, ‘Is this mmm?’ the student answers
correctly within 3 seconds.”
Can you see that these are two examples demonstrating knowledge of letter-sound correspondence?

Write these translations onto your copy of the standard course of study and onto a planning document such as this. YOUR concrete and tangible objectives tell you EXACTLY what to teach and what to assess.

b. Another version of the standard course of study. Has lesson plans!
c.
d.
e. Tested curriculum materials (programs) that teach specific items in strands in a logical progression, and provide procedures forteaching acquisition, generalization, retention, and sometimes fluency. Here.

See these.

Direct instruction spoken English for ELL students

Language for Learning,
Espanol to English

Scope and sequence

Check alignment with standard course of study! Teach many of the same things?

Research base.

Reading Mastery and DISTAR
Arithmetic
Research base.

With disadvantaged children and children with special needs, explicit instruction of tools
skills works better than less explicit instruction. See the research below.

2.Examine research on effective procedures with certain kids and skills.
a. Project Follow Through. The Largest Education Evaluation. Showed the superiority of
focused, explicit, direct instruction in teaching reading, math, and language.
Effective School Practices, on Project Follow Through.

Graph 1. Effects of different curriculum models on achievement.
Graph 2. Which model produces the most significant outcomes?

b. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark. Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not
Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based,
Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching

c. Rosenshine, B. (1997). Advances in Research on Instruction.

Rosenshine, B. (1997). The Case for Explicit, Teacher-led, Cognitive Strategy Instruction.

d. Ellis, E.S., & Worthington, L.A. (1994). Research Synthesis on Effective Teaching
Principles and the Design of Quality Tools for Educators.

e. Walberg, H.J. & Paik, S. (2000). Effective education practices. Educational Practices
Series. International Academy of Education. International Bureau of Education.

Copy and paste guidelines for teaching from the above.

3.Make groups of competency goals of subjects (e.g., math, social studies, science, literacy) and put the selected specific knowledge items in each group.
For early days in the curriculum, make sure to select the least complex items first---that is, the items that have the fewest elements or require the fewest preskills. Tag the more complex items for later lessons.
Each group of items is going to be one or two lessons during the day.

Groups/competency goals Specific knowledge item translated as
concrete and tangible objectives.

4. Now arrange the groups in 3, above, into a sequence of lessons. Each specific knowledge item in a group is a TASK in a lesson. If there are more than 6 or so items/tasks, divide the list for that group into items for a second lesson later in the day.

Make it a logical sequence. If you will be reading a story, kids need to know certain vocabulary words. Have a lesson on those words earlier in the day and then review them during the first task in story time. Or, if kids will be sounding out words in an afternoon lesson, make sure in a morning lesson to review earlier-taught sounds and teach a few new letter-sounds that will be in the afternoon words.

Make a schedule.

Lessons or Activities (competency goals or knowledge systems/
Tasks (work on specific knowledge items)

L 1 2 Snack 3 4 lunch 5
Tasks 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6

Nap
L 6
1 2 3 4 5 6

Write in the procedure for acquisition. What kind of knowledge is an item? Fact, list, etc. Use the proper procedure. At the end, think of how you might later work on generalization, retention, fluency, integration, or simply add more examples.

Lesson/activity 1 Competency goal/subject/knowledge system______

T 1 Concrete, tangible objective______
Procedure