My students are amazing. The area is middle class with a two parent household. Education is an important part life, along with extra curricular activities such as musical lessons, athletic practices, and dance recitals. Moms and dads often volunteer in the classroom to help support student learning. Family is an important aspect of life and supporting one another in education is high.
Teaching these energetic and curious little people has a lot of perks and few struggles.
Every day my students have centers to rotate through while I work with small groups at the table. As with all first grade students, there are varying levels of learners. The work hard in class and success in school is expected. I love working with these little people. I see so much growth from the beginning of the year through the end of the year.
My Project
As a first grade teacher, I am going to use these white boards in whole and small group instruction for math and language arts. During large group instruction, students will reply to a teacher question on their whiteboard and hold it up. This allows me to check for understanding and determine if I need to adjust instruction or if I can continue moving forward. Students enjoy showing me and sharing their answers to one another. It is one method to keep a high level of engagement during instruction time. During small groups, students are able to demonstrate their understanding of math strategies, spelling, vocabulary, or comprehension questions. The boards are used to facilitate discussion within the small group or the large group. These informal assessments help drive my instruction to adapt curriculum to meet students’ academic needs. Intervention groups are also created using these assessments. Intervention groups help my students to become closer or meet proficiency standards in math and language arts.
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