Land of I Can

Visual documentation of our progress: 

Key

Red square = 10 sight words

Cloud = Writing full name

Leaf = Letter recongition

Apple = Letter sound mastery

Hot air balloon = A-level book

Red sticker (on balloon) = B-level book

final reading growth

We officially made 1.44 years of growth in reading.

Unofficially, I feel really good about the growth we made outside of the numbers. Although Sunshine made the least growth, he is lately on fire and I feel really good about the momentum that he is gaining. I think that with the right amount of coaching next year, his growth could really soar.

There is one group of students whose growth I am less satisfied with. These are the four students who are leaving Kinder just at grade level.  One of them is N, who joined our class in January. The other three are the ones I'm feeling frustrated about. I think that some of their struggles are developmental, and perhaps they are not yet ready to read. On the other hand, all three of them struggle with short-term memory, attention, and motivation. Even with moderate to high parent involvement, they have not experienced significant growth. I am frustrated that there is a category of children that I have not yet learned how to reach. Challenge for next year, I suppose.

The majority of the class ended the year on D or above; about 90% of children are at or above grade-level. We have a lot to celebrate.

reading progress

As of today we have officially made 1.25 years worth of growth in reading. I admit that my original goal was 1.75, but I'm still proud. The student that I got in January has made year of progress in 5 months. I feel good about that.

a day!

Today we hung the last hot air balloon on the Land of I Can. That means that every student in our class is reading at at least an A-level. 

Every. Single. Child.

Including our newest addition who has only been here for two months. Crazy excited Ms. Haley came out for a short minute and did a reading dance.

Here's a close up of our rainbow. Look at all of those hot air balloons. Each additional sticker represents the next level of books. Each color of the rainbow represents 10 sight words mastered (red =10, orange = 20, etc.)

two more balloons in the sky...

I just passed two more babies up to Reading Level A. Before quiet time, they proudly hung their hot air balloons in the Land of I Can. A few weeks ago, both were struggling with one-to-one correspondence. I love the days when I can feel our momentum!

9 day 9 leaf challenge

We have 9 leaves to go on our tree. Nine students who are close but have not mastered letter recognition. So, I offered them a challenge. If we can help each other get all of the leaves up on the tree in 9 days, I am going to give them 5 marbles for their prize cup. They're pumped and we even made up a dance. I think we can do it!

fluff

We are going to start adding fluff to the LoIC on Monday, because 4 students can write their name like first graders! That means that students can:

• write their first and last name
• spell their full name correctly
• use upper and lowercase appropriately in their name

I find it appropriate that the cloud is about to get more pronounced as we move into November.

The Land of I Can

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted a flashy tracker for my kiddies. I wanted them to be very invested, so I new I needed something visual. A week before school started I came across a video from the unstoppable Ingrid Siss and I knew it was love.

Essentially, over the course of the year we will all work to make The Land of I Can (LoIC) beautiful by adding elements as students master certain benchmarks (a ray on the sun for naming all their shapes, a petal on one of the flowers for counting to 100, etc.). Of the maybe 40 precious hours I had in my classroom before school started, I probably spent 10 of them on this board.

Ever since that moment, I have been patiently waiting for when we could start adding to LoIC. And finally, the day came.

As of Friday, three of my babies can name all of their upper- and lowercase letters, so we added their hard-earned leaves to the tree. I'm hoping to have many more by the end of this week!

in less than 12 hours...

I will have my very own Kindergartners. Twenty-three of them, give or take.

In the past week I have worked relentlessly to make my room go from this:

To this:

It still needs a lot of work, but we are finally getting there. Soon the walls will be covered in student work and projects.

Maybe you're looking at the floor thinking gross? If you are willing to help furnish my classroom, we still need a rug for carpet time! Please go to Donor's Choose to give.

I am scaredexcitedterrifiednervousthrilled to start this journey, to be responsible for the emotional, academic, and personal well-being of 23 little people. Most of all, I am humbled to have this opportunity. Here's to nine-months of everyday new-beginnings, learning to read, loving to learn, and of course, exploration! Here's to The Land of I Can.