Kindergarten forms the basis of a child’s first experience with formal education. With that said, graduate teachers are always looking for latest and fascinating styles to develop lesson plans that will introduce curriculum to their excited students. Being one of those teachers, I needed to understand the subject matter deeply and maintain flexibility in order to help my students with meaningful lessons and take-home great ideas every day. Coming up with kindergarten lesson plans was not easy. I had to turn to the pedagogical content knowledge model which acted as my guide all through.
The first element of pedagogical content knowledge is comprehension. In order to prepare the learning materials for these kindergarten students, I had to understand the purpose, ideas and subject matter structures of the three subjects. I went ahead to understand what I was going to teach, and the methods that would be appropriate for these students. In the process of preparing teaching materials, I always focused on comprehending the purpose. I ensured that the students understood the subjects by engaging them in many ways in order for them to read on their own, enable them to use and enjoy their learning experiences, and respect others. Through the use of in-depth content knowledge, I managed to give the students an opportunity to ask and discover new information on their own. I also helped students to create a broader understanding of new information.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Transformation is the second in-depth content knowledge I used. Transformation helped me to convert the content into powerful and adaptive knowledge that the students could understand. In order to ensure that the ideas were helpful to my students, I used a number of processes including preparation where I critically analyzed the content of the subjects. Representation helped me to convey ideas in form of analogies and metaphors. Instructional selection helped me to identify relevant teaching models for kindergarten students. The other method I used was the adaptable student materials and activities that had learning styles that students easily understood. Since the class has students from different diverse backgrounds, I tailored adaptable learning styles that were appropriate to the representations and presentations I used.
The other element that I used was instructions. I came up with a variety of instructions from the teaching acts which included pedagogical aspects, management, humor, presentations, questioning, and inquiry instruction. An evaluation was the other element I used to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the instructions. Since this is the beginning of their school life, I always evaluated the students at the end of every lesson to test their level of understanding and help them to master the content they covered
Reflection is the last element in the in-depth content knowledge I used. This helped me to look back at my teaching capabilities and achievement as a teacher. Reflection helped me to check my emotions. This is the most crucial element in professional development. As a kindergarten teacher, it is important to observe all the outcomes, determine the reason for success and access the capabilities of students before promoting them to grade one.
Developmentally appropriate strategies I used while preparing all the three lesson plans included the following; acknowledgment. This strategy helped me to monitor every student to find out what they said and did. Next, I modeled attitudes and sort for ways of solving problems among the students since they are from two diverse cultures. The other development strategy I used was demonstrations where I taught them on how to write confusing letters such as “Q” and “q”. Lastly, I created a small challenge involving what the students could do. Here I laid out a collection of chips and involved them in the first counting. I picked some asked them to recount all of them again.
The culturally learning strategies I used to prepare for my classes included inclusion. Here I chose topics that are relevant to both African American and Caucasian cultures. Through this, students were able to share unique perspectives. The other strategy I used is raising confidence among the students. I congratulated them on every small thing they did. I also gave them questions that they handled with ease. I also learned about the students that formed my class. This strategy helped them to adapt to my teaching style and this makes children feel valued. Lastly, I delivered different content through different learning stations. Student diversity plays a big role in how they respond to different types of content. Different learning station taught different content using a unique method.
In this class, the linguistically teaching and learning strategies I used included the use of synonyms to explain the same concepts. I also used gestures to stress different words. Since my class had students whose first language was not English, I used correct pronunciation to increase the intelligibility of the students. Lastly, I expressed my interest in these students’ cultures.
Learning in kindergarten has changed. Currently, it is less play and so much work. This has brought learning standards with higher expectations for all students in this class. An association of these standards and assessments play a huge role in today’s kindergarten students (Messiou et al., 2016) . The fact is that most students in this class have attention deficit disorder which calls for the modification of instructions to help these students to succeed in class. It should be clear that instruction modification is not meant to penalize these students for their inability to learn.
In order for me to meet each student’s learning needs and promote positive outcomes, I modified the learning instructions in three areas. The first instructions were in lesson presentation. When developing the lesson plan, I included several effective instructions that will be used to deliver lessons. Some of the modifications I made to the learning instructions for these students include; keeping clear lesson objectives, collaborations among students, lessons to be delivered at a brisk pace, students will recite in unison, make use of meaningful manipulatives and learning materials, and vary my tonal voice and model enthusiasm to students. In practice, students will be provided with more time to complete their tests or assignments, assignments will be broken into mini-assignments so as to avoid overwhelming the students and minimize the number of practices each student does so as to demonstrate mastery.
The second area is the physical arrangement of classrooms. Kindergarten students are easily distracted and this becomes hard for them to focus on the tasks that are at hand ( Voogt et al., 2013 ). The goal of arranging classrooms is to tap the attention of students and help them to focus. Some of these modification instructions include seating students away from noisy and high traffic areas such as windows, and hallway. The second modification is to define the workspace of every student. If students will be learning from the floor, carpet square should be used to define every child’s working space. Lastly, the students should only have the required materials at specific learning times and keep away unnecessary materials in special tool places. This will help to minimize confusion among children and promote time management and this leads to positive outcomes among students.
The last area is on work assignments. Most kindergarten students are inefficient learners since they suffer from attention deficit disorder. Instruction modification involves spending a significant amount of time to come up with learning strategies (Day at al., 2005). Organization strategies are crucial for students with attention disorders. Every student should be helped to make his or her reminders using strategies like daily schedules, assignment sheets and “to do” lists. Other instructions include the use of color coding to create attention on critical information in their assignments as well as give clear visual and oral direction.
Difficult Subject to write a Lesson Plan
Of all the subjects, developing a Science lesson plan was the most difficult. People believe that teaching kid is fun and easy. The truth is that handling kindergarten student is hard as it is when developing their lesson plans. Science has terminologies and concepts that kindergarten students cannot comprehend. It is not easy to simplify complex scientific concepts such living and non- living things and temperature differences to suit a 5 or 6-year-old. These concepts are meant to be mastered, something that is not common with kindergarten students who forget what they have been taught in less than 5 minutes (Messiou et al., 2016) .
The vision of learning and teaching science is well presented by the National Science Education Standards. In order for me to develop my career from the childhood field, I will participate in continuing professional development (CPD). CPD is a broad program that covers a number of activities under the teaching profession. First, it offers mentoring, coaching, and support to teaching teams. Second, it offers external activities such as postgraduate study, industrial placements, and educational conferences (Voogt et al., 2013). This program was designed to identify and act upon teachers’ development needs especially those who are involved in early childhood.
In conclusion, kindergarten is a special class as it is the one that introduces learners’ to curriculums. Lessons plans should be prepared by experienced teachers to ensure that these learners get the best foundation. The most challenging subject to teach and develop lesson plans is science because its contents keep on increasing and changing. Therefore, as a science teacher, I need to keep pace with these changes. CPD should act as a guide and tool for updating science teachers. I will always simplify the complex terminologies using common things that the students can understand and remember.
References
Day, D., Leahy, S., Lyon, C., Thompson, M., & Wiliam, D. (2005). Assessment: continually adapt instruction to meet student needs. Assessment , 63 (3).
Messiou, K., Ainscow, M., Echeita, G., Goldrick, S., Hope, M., Paes, I., ... & Vitorino, T. (2016). Learning from differences: a strategy for teacher development with respect to student diversity. School Effectiveness and School Improvement , 27 (1), 45-61.
Voogt, J., Fisser, P., Pareja Roblin, N., Tondeur, J., & van Braak, J. (2013). Technological pedagogical content knowledge–a review of the literature. Journal of computer assisted learning , 29 (2), 109-121.
