My Kindergarten

Student Teaching

Experience in Pinon, AZ

Katie Russell

Hello, my name is Katie Russell and I am a senior studying Early Childhood Education at Indiana University. I chose to participate in the Global Gateway Navajo Nation Program after having worked with native children at Purdue’s GERI summer camp. I also chose this program because of my interest in rural education. I was placed at Bureau of Indian Education grant school in a kindergarten classroom at Pinon Community School in Piñon, AZ for 12 weeks.

My student teaching partner and I arrived in Piñon (originally named Be’ek’id Baa’ Ahoodzání, or Hole in the Lake) on January 2, 2016. Piñon is a very small, rural community with a population nearing 2,000. There is a Bashas’ (local grocery chain), Conoco gas station, Subway, Pizza Edge, Chapter House (local government building), health clinic, the Piñon Community School campus, the 3 public schools, and a post office. There are a few clusters of houses, but for the most part families live on large stretches of land scattered throughout this rural area. Only the main road, Bashas’ parking lot, and the school parking lots are paved; everything else is dirt (which turns into mud when it rains).

Photo retrieved from: https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Navajo-Reservation-Map

Piñon, AZ

Pinon Community SchoolWe lived within the school campus, which has several buildings in a circular formation. Below are two images of the school campus: one from the ground and one aerial view. The idea is that the school grounds are supposed to be representative of a hogan (traditional Navajo home/also used for ceremonies), the lifecycle, and the four sacred mountains (part of traditional Navajo religion). The buildings are in a circle formation, similar to a hogan, but also to represent the cyclical nature of life. Each prong coming off from the center is supposed to be representative of each stage of life: infanthood/childhood, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and older adulthood/death. The center of the school ground is a large circle pit which is representative of the fire pit in a hogan. It is a sacred spot and people are not supposed to walk through the middle of it, although many of the children do. The roofs of the buildings are coordinated with the colors of the sacred mountains: white, black, blue, and yellow. Without this explanation, I would have never realized all the symbolism behind the design of the school grounds. The different buildings include two dorms, recreation center (with an indoor and outdoor basketball court), the administration building, the kindergarten school, the cafeteria, a computer lab, and a library/looming building.

About 70 kids ages 8-18 live in the dorms Sunday-Thursday. A majority of the children are girls and most of the kids are in 4th-9th grade. The dorm hosts children from several school districts, including Piñon Unified School District, Black Mesa, and Chinle. Staying in the dorm is no cost to families. For the most part, the dorm serves children from “broken” homes (divorce, CPS, parents are alcoholics/addicted to meth). The dorm is staffed by a homeliving manager, three homeliving assistants (two elementary and one high school), a counselor, a recreation supervisor, a nurse, and a few other individuals. Most of the children arrived on Sunday, where we served them dinner and then enjoyed recreation time with them before they had to do their chores and go to bed. On the week days, we began tutoring immediately after school with whichever age group required assistance; they separate elementary/middle and high school (4:00-4:45pm). After tutoring, we went to the cafeteria to assist in serving dinner (4:45-5:30pm). The activities after dinner have varied greatly, but they have included recreation time (5:30-7:30pm: playing board/card games, playing basketball/other athletic games, and playing video games) going to G.R.E.A.T. class [gang prevention…similar to DARE], counseling sessions with Miss J, and watching TV. Most of the kids were required to go back to their dorms at 7:30pm to do their chores (sweeping, mopping, etc.), shower, and go to bed (by 8:30pm!). We thought their bed time was early until we learned that they had to get up at 5:30am to do chores and then catch the bus to faraway schools.

Dorm Life

The school I student taught at is extremely small. The building has four classrooms inside, but only three were being utilized. There were four teachers in the school and each class had about 15 children. Three of the teachers were lead teachers in each classroom and the fourth was a special education teacher who floated between rooms. Two of the classes were kindergarten (kids ages 5-6) and the other was transitional kindergarten (kids ages 4-5). This is a Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) grant school. They rely entirely on grants from the BIE and Title I funding to run. Parents can opt to send their children here. This school ran without a principal since August. They got a new principal about two weeks before winter break. We were unable to meet the new principal until a few weeks into our experience.

Kindergarten School

Second ClassroomAfter a little over a week in my first placement classroom, I

was moved to Miss J’s classroom, where she taught 14 kindergarteners. There were four boys and 10 girls, with one set of twins. In this classroom, there was a 2.5 hour reading block and 35 minutes of math with no intervention time. The children in my classroom were suffering academically. Usually by January, kindergarteners know all letters and sounds and are beginning to read. The children in this room did not know all of the letters or sounds. There was no differentiation (teaching children at different levels of difficulty) and no intervention (catching children up to where they should be). Miss J treated the children in her room with respect and tried to make learning as fun as possible.

Schedule TransformationWhen collaborating with the home liaison and

principal, they both expressed interest in transforming the kindergarten schedule. The principal wanted the day to begin with circle time and the liaison wanted to see an intervention block. After examining the schedule for several weeks, I rewrote a schedule to propose to the administration. I opted to change reading block from 2.5 hours to 90 minutes, using a more Daily 5-inspired model. I also included roughly 30 minutes of writing. I moved the math block to the morning and extended it from 35 to 60 minutes. In the afternoon, I added an intervention block to help reinforce reading and math skills. After presenting it to the principal, she allowed me to begin implementing it in the classroom. Miss J switched to this schedule two weeks before I completed my four week take-over in the classroom.

Morning MeetingOne of the first things I noticed was that the children in the

classroom did not have a consistent morning routine. Some mornings they would have calendar and some they would do a worksheet and others they would just begin reading block. One of the most important things to establish in an early childhood classroom is a consistent routine. I proposed to Miss J that we begin to have morning meeting. I explained each of the components to her and she told me I could begin to host them if I would like. Each Responsive Classroom morning meeting is supposed to have four components: greeting (saying hello to everyone), sharing (answering a question), group activity , and morning message (a letter written from the teacher to the students that everyone reads together). Each morning I had the children greet one another with a fist-bump and a, “Hello/Good morning, name.” The greeting was followed by us all sitting in a circle and sharing anything we wanted to share from our lives. Typically our activity was academically-based and one of our favorites was the counting game. Other favorites included letter-sound match, unscrambling sentences, and making 10. Each day we would end our morning meeting with calendar and the morning message. These morning meetings greatly improved the classroom culture, created a sense of community and belonging, and helped me build rapport with all the children in the classroom.

Reading BlockReading block began with our Zoo-Phonics cards (which is a phonics

program based on animals and movements) and reading a fluency poem (which we used for two days before switching to a new one). I then introduced the various stations for reading block that day and sent the kids to their first one. The stations included guided reading with me, Teach Your Monster to Read game on the computer, and workbook pages/mini-books/fluency poem station/read-to-self at the independent station. I always met with my lowest readers first in the morning for guided reading. Guided reading was when I would have a small group of kids (4-5) and we would go through a phonemic awareness exercise, a short phonics/sight words exercise, read a book on their level (Ex. I like the cat. I like the dog. I like the turtle.), and then end with writing one sentence about the book. Since our school did not have leveled books for the children to read, I asked the principal to purchase Tara West’s Kindergarten Guiding Reading Bundle from Teachers Pay Teachers. This is what I used to print all of my little books and activities for my guided reading groups, such as CVC writing strips, phonics cards, and phonemic awareness activities. After the first station (15 minutes), we reconvened on the carpet for phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is hearing the differences between words and the smallest sounds in the language. It is what you use to realize that dog and log rhyme and that cat and cook both start with /c/. The Imagine It! Curriculum that we had lacked a strong phonemic awareness portion, so I purchased a phonemic awareness curriculum from Whole Hearted Teaching on Teachers Pay Teachers. I made it interactive, so the children would stand up to chop words on their arm, hop up and down to identify rhyming words, and shout to identify various sounds in words (similar to Dr. Michael Heggerty’s curriculum). After only using it a few days, I saw a dramatic difference in their phonemic awareness skills, so I continued to use the program during the rest of my teaching.

Reading Block ContinuedAfter that, we read our fluency poem again. These fluency

poems gave the children a chance to learn about print concepts (left to right, top to bottom), one-to-one tracking of words, new vocabulary, and practice reading with expression. The children really enjoy learning these little poems and I heard them reciting them all day long! After that, we transitioned to another station for 15 minutes. After our second station, we met on the carpet again for a read-aloud. The reading curriculum we had did not have very many read-alouds and I feel it is important for children to experience great literature daily. Thanks to the many people who mailed me books, I had a supply of quality read-alouds to use. Oftentimes my teacher would expect the children to sit silently while she read, but I allowed the children to talk, discuss, and make comments after I finished reading the text on each page. I think it is crucial to discuss their thoughts and connections to the books because 1) these conversations were not occurring at home and 2) the children needed to build their comprehension skills. I did not read themed books, simply because I did not have that many to choose from. After reading our story, the children completed their last 15 minute station. Every child went to every station every day.

Writing BlockI completely changed our writing. For the first week, I read

the children a second story, had them tell me their favorite part to write on the board, and then had the children copy the sentences. While I felt this was beneficial for comprehension, I did not feel that this was allowing them the freedom they needed to practice phonetic spelling and remembering what words to write. I discussed my concerns with my cooperating teacher and asked her what her writing goals were for the children. She said that she wanted them to write rich, phonetic sentences. I came up with the idea of giving the children an image to examine and discuss. I decided to use images from National Geographic because they are visually appealing and have a variety of subjects. I created print out pages with the images and a space for the children to write to use during writing block. I began writing block by displaying the image on the SMART board. The children gathered on the floor and we discussed what was in the image. I modeled writing a phonetic sentence about the image for the children. I always pointed out that sentences must begin with a capital letter, have finger spaces, and have an end mark. I then gave the children a few moments to think about what sentence they could write about the image. They were able to share their sentence with me verbally and then were given a piece of paper to go write about the image. I was honestly shocked at the interesting sentences many of my children came up with from viewing the pictures and making inferences. I love that they had this time to develop their vocabulary and their imaginations.

Writing Block Continued

The three sharks are after the turtle.

A penguin bit his tail! The penguin is angry and angry and angry!

The hedgehog live at the mountain. I see the hedgehog. A hedgehog fly.

The camel has polka dots. The camel has sharp teeth. The camel has long neck.

Math BlockFor the first several weeks of student teaching, I opted to take on teaching math block. I felt that this was an area of great weakness of mine and wanted to improve by taking more time during student teaching to practice and learn how to teach math more effectively. At first, I taught a unit on shapes. I had the kids do several shape activities to help them learn about 2D shapes and their attributes, including making shapes with playdoh, making shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks, drawing shapes, hunting for shapes around the room, and making shapes out of pattern blocks. My main goal in all of my lessons was to make the information as tangible as possible; children need to touch to learn! I finished the shape unit with several hands-on activities: folding cutouts to find the lines of symmetry, making symmetrical and nonsymmetrical shapes with pattern blocks, interacting with 2D and 3D shapes in stations, using “I Have Who Has” 2D shapes, etc. I was trying to make math as engaging as possible, so it made me happy when I overheard a child say, “This is fun! Is this math?”

Math Block Continued

I then taught a unit on measurement. I began each measurement lesson with graphing, counting review, and addition/decomposition review. The first day I had all of the children take their shoes off and we made a graph of the types of shoes we had (Velcro, zipper, tie, slip-on). We counted how many were in each category and found which one had the most and the least. This was a good way to hit those graphing standards while reviewing counting and least/most. We then did whole body counting, which was where I showed them a number and we counted by moving our bodies (jumping, toe-touches, swinging our arms past the midline, etc.). This let us review counting but also move our bodies. Then I read them an addition number story and we figured out how many (Ex. I have 3 white cookies and 2 pink cookies. How many do I have in all?). Then we moved on to the main activity of the day. I had the children do interactive measuring activities, including comparing classmates’ heights, finding objects shorter and longer than a string, and finding objects shorter and longer than a popsicle stick. My main goal was to give a brief overview of new vocabulary and concepts, model the activity, and then let the children explore the concept through a hands-on activity. I also took time to experiment with math workshop/guided math, where I had the children rotate through math stations. The math stations included Splash Math on the computer, guided math with me, and an independent activity. It was valuable to attempt both types of math blocks because it helped me better understand how I want to teach math in my future classroom.

Lunch & RecessEach day I was responsible for monitoring the children

at lunch and recess. At lunch, I would sit with all the children and talk with them as we all ate. The children would then go to SPARKS, which was P.E. class, and afterwards we would all have indoor or outdoor recess. I would always play with the children at recess and they loved that! It really helped me connect with the children on a personal level.

Intervention BlockBecause the school was not following the mandate of

a 3-tiered intervention set-up, I added a 30-45 minute intervention block to the end of the school day to add review time to the day. I used this time to review concepts, since many of my children were struggling. We played letter-sound bingo, wrote CVC words, and practiced counting. I tried to make this time extra interactive because it was hard for everyone to focus at the end of the day. My children especially enjoyed count or write the room activities. In the last two weeks, I began using KinderMath Number Sense Routines for math intervention and Kindervention for phonics/writing intervention. These both offered engaging activities that worked well for kindergarteners and were easy to prepare and teach. Intervention time did benefit the children in the classroom. I saw their number sense skills and phonics skills greatly improve.

Highlight of the ExperienceOne of the most amazing things that happened during this last week was when one of my students came up to me and said, “Miss Russell, I can read this book [Go, Dogs, Go!] all by myself!” I asked her to show me. She sat down and read me the entire book! I arrived here in January and none of my children knew all of their letters and sounds. Some of them knew a few, but most did not know many. I saw all of my hard work pay off as her face lit up after she read that entire book on her own. Afterwards I complimented her and gave her a high-five. I told her she should be proud of herself and she replied, “Miss Russell, I am proud of myself! I can read myself!” and she proceeded to read the book a second time. While I had seen gains in my children, I did not realize I would see such huge gains from them. I was probably beaming as much as she was. This showed me that my work here really did matter and it did change the lives of these kids.

The last day in the classroom was sad, even though I was excited to go home. The day before, I had Miss K take a picture of me with all the children in the classroom. I printed out a copy for each child and wrote a little note on it: Thanks for being a great little teacher! – Miss Russell. I was late to the classroom that last morning because Whitney and I skyped into IU to present for the Exemplary Teaching Conference. I entered the classroom about 15 minutes late and when I walked in I saw several of the children sitting in their cubbies and examining the picture I had placed in there the night before. Many of them came up to me and asked if I was really leaving and where I was going. I told them that I had to leave so I could finish school so I could be a teacher. They claimed that I was their teacher. It was heartbreaking. As I was teaching guided reading, one of the little girls asked me who their teacher would be. When I told her that Miss J would be their teacher, she said, “Aww, but I wish you were our teacher!” I spent as much time with my kids as possible and at the end of the day I gave them all gifts. They were so excited! When it was time to leave, I got lots of hugs. I will miss these kids so much. They taught me a lot and I enjoyed watching them grow and learn.

My Last Day in the Classroom