La Classe de Mme Caroline

Back to School: My Kindergarten Flow of the Day

For context, my school hours are 8:00-2:30. I would switch classes around 11:15 every day. The times I put in are approximate. I went by the cues of my students rather than the clock. Sometimes if the students were very engaged, I let things go longer. On the other hand, if things weren’t going well, I did not hesitate to cut activities short. I tried to keep the number of transitions from indoor to outdoor to a minimum, but unfortunately, with the way our school’s schedule is, there’s only so much I could do. We follow the same schedule as the rest of the school so the students have 2 outdoor recess blocks per day.

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Back to School: Planning your Kindergarten Flow of the Day

I never thought I would ever teach kindergarten full time. I’ve been teaching since 2013. I saw myself as a junior teacher until I got thrown into my first LTO in grade 2/3 and I absolutely fell in love with primary. Since then, I moved around through various positions, but Kindergarten terrified me! I loved doing coverage in kinder land, but I wasn’t interested in teaching it full time. This is my second year in Kindergarten and my professional views on how to teach it have changed a lot. I currently teach in a 50% French model, so I teach two classes for half a day. I’ve found a lot of Flows of the Day out there focus on a full day model with one class, so I will be providing ideas and things to consider on how to create an effective flow of the day when you have much less time with the students.

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Distance Learning – Getting Started

COVID-19 has left us in very uncertain times. It got really intense, really quickly and as much as I’m happy that the Canadian government has taken it as seriously as they have, it has left a lot of uncertainty with work. Both myself and my husband are now home, which my cat is LOVING, but it feels weird. Weird not to see my friends and family. Weird not to be able to go out to stores and restaurants whenever I want. Weird to not be able to go to the gym and see my personal trainer. I’ve been with her for over 5 years and I this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. I feel like I took all these for granted now that it’s been taken away from me. I imagine all of you are feeling the same way, as are our students and their parents.

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Directed Drawings in Kindergarten

Directed drawings are a great way to teach early drawing skills. I often hear students complain that they want to draw something, but that they don’t know how. Breaking it down into step by step instructions makes it accessible for everybody – no matter what their skill level is. It is also great fine motor practice!

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Number Recognition and Counting

Kindergarten is the only grade where Math is taught in French in my school board, so I feel a lot of pressure to get that Math vocabulary in. I’ve found that the trickiest part about Math in French for most students is number recognition. They really struggle looking at a number and knowing its name as well as hearing a number name and knowing which number it is. In this post, I’ll describe methods I use to help teach French Number Recognition and Counting.

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Teaching the Alphabet in Kindergarten

Teaching the alphabet and sounds can be tricky in a second language. I’m going to share with you how I teach it in my Kindergarten classroom and what kinds of activities & centres I do in this post. I start my week by reading a sound story from the book Raconte-moi les sons. The stories can be a little complicated for French language learners, so I simplify the language a bit, and help them with picture cues.

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