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Kindergarten Class Structure - Tami Mangusso

Submitted by Tami Mangusso, Aurora, Colorado

Idea posted 2010-06-15

Here are what my Kindergarten classes look like:

Students sing a song as they come in and walk counterclockwise around the Velcro tape that I have on the floor. They will sing the song two times; by the end of the second time, the line leader will end up on one of the gray tapes and the caboose will be on the other gray tape. My room isn't wide enough to make a big enough circle for 30 students, so I have a rectangle. The gray tapes are at the front by the Promethean board. Between the two gray tapes is an opening which is where I stand, sit on the floor, or sit on my stool. The line leader will check to make sure the group is focused and anyone who isn't, they just say that person's name and usually that fixes the problem. Once everyone is focused, the leader sits down and the rest of the crew sits down.
I have my students recite the rules with hand gestures. I pick one student to lead the crew in reciting the rules. The leader sits on my stool.
I sit on the stool and lead the group in a FingerPlay. We say the FingerPlay to a steady beat, then I add some rhythm exercises at the end, but I use a neutral syllable (e.g., bom bom bombom bom) Then, we finish by saying the FingerPlay one more time (takes about 2-3 minutes).
Students will echo rhythms as they move to go and sit on the risers. Once again, I use neutral syllables to do this.
Pitch Exploration: I use various toys and gadgets to this. John Feierabend's First Steps In Music: Preschool And Beyond book has a lot of suggestions for this type of thing (about 1 minute).
Song Fragment: We sing an echo song.
Cover about 10 minutes of new material.
Move back to the floor to do a dance. As they move to the floor, they are echoing rhythms or short Solfege patterns.
Perform a dance. I use various resources for this: Jump Jim Joe book, Down In The Valley book, Movement Songs Children Love book, Greg & Steve CDs, etc.
Sit down on the tapes on the floor.
Pass out Beat Buddies and sing a song while bouncing Beat Buddies on various body parts. Beat Buddies are very small Beanie Babies (about 3-5 minutes).
Sing a lullaby as we rock our Beat Buddies. We sing the lullaby two times as we rock our Beat Buddies. Then, we stand up and continue to sing the lullaby again as we lay the Beat Buddies in their basket. Once they put them away, they go and sit on the risers.
Lay Poly Dots on the floor in scatter formations (all over). I use Poly Dots that are 9" rubber circles. I put one dot for every student.
Echo rhythms or Solfege pattern as they come off the risers to find a dot to stand on.
Perform a dance from the Move It! DVD or do it without the DVD (about 3 minutes).
Students echo rhythms or Solfege patterns as the pick up their dot and place it on the table, then they go and sit on a tape on the floor.
Debrief: We pass a Koosh ball around. This time is for students to share what they felt went well (we call this "A Star") and for what they need to work on ("A Wish"). Whoever has the Koosh ball is the only one who can share. They share one Star and one Wish, then they pass the Koosh ball to someone else. I have a scoreboard on my flip chart that is on my Promethean board. Whenever they do something well, they get a happy face and when they don't do something well, they get a sad face. During "A Star and A Wish Time," I have the scoreboard page up, so they can use it as part of our debrief discussion. There is no prize for having more happy faces than sad faces. The idea behind the scoreboard is for the class to know if they are on target as a crew or not on target. My school is in the process of becoming an Expeditionary Learning School and we use learning targets. The students evaluate themselves on where they are. I also have the students evaluate themselves as a whole crew (about 5-10 minutes).
Play "The Line Up Song" from Music K-8, Vol. 20, No. 4. Students must be in line and ready to go by the end of the song.

Sometimes I will skip the debrief and use this time to read a book.