Thoughts on the article "What Kindergartners Need to Know"

To be honest, I think it's a good idea that they have made standards for Kindergartners finally. They have standards for other grades and ages, and they tend to be helpful, make sense, and be fair (of what I've seen at least). I think there's two ways to look at it; as a restriction to teaching, and as a guide to teaching. Kindergarten seems to be an unsure time for many teachers, about WHAT to teach exactly. what's important? Morals and manners, or letters and science? Whenever I think about teaching kindergarten, I'm scared away by the thought, one reason being because of this exact issue; WHAT am I suppose to teach?

I think having a guide that includes both the curricular and personal/social requirements is a nice way to let teachers know exactly what concepts needs to be taught. However, I am big on creativity, and I wouldn't want this 'guide' to tell me HOW to teach, and it doesn't. It gives examples, and that's fine, but doesn't order me to use a certain lesson plan or strategy. So I feel it lets you just know what you need to teach, and you can still be creative about how you go about teaching your class.

Also, these guides aren't rules... There's no saying you can't add your own ideas if they're not listed, or modify something on it. I see this guideline for kindergartners' as a positive, necessary step in increasing our teaching quality and methods for young learners.

A Lesson Using Images

My lesson using images would be one for pre-k through first grade students. I would hand out sheets of paper with the following pictures and text on them, with the student's job being to write out the name of the animal shown on the two lines following it. The name would also be written right below the picture.

I think this would be helpful, for those many visual learners, to get the concept of not only how to spell out and write a word, but get an idea of what the word means exactly by looking at the picture. I think it'd help keep their interest longer and make writing less abstract to young learners.

My Teaching Philosophy

Creativity

Hands-on

Student driven

Teaching the 'whole child'

Multiple Intelligences