Everything you ever wanted to know about Kindergarten...

Admit it. You do it, too.

You wonder:

• Do other teachers have to teach this?
• How much prep do other districts get?
• Have other kindergarten children had their recess time stolen away?
• Is anyone else teaching their own PE every week?
• Does ANYONE get art from an art specialist anymore?
• What is kindergarten like in other countries?

My friends, WE WONDER, TOO!

So, we did something about it. Our mission: to collect data points, about everything from class size to prep time to reading instruction, from as many teachers-of-five-year-olds as we can find, all over the world. 

The survey is intended only for classroom teachers (not administrators, instructional aides, specialists, parents, or consultants) of children who are 5 (or very close to 5) years old at the beginning of the school year. If you are NOT a classroom teacher of children this age, you can still help by skipping directly to step 2, below.

Your job:

1: Click the link below, and answer the survey. We estimate it will take about 10-20 minutes, and there are NO essay questions! You may want a calculator, because we do ask things like: "How many minutes a week do you teach?"

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ULTIMATE #KINDERCHAT SURVEY

2: Spread the word. Please tweet, facebook, pin, blog, e-mail, fax, snail-mail, skywrite, crayon, the link to EVERY SINGLE TEACHER YOU KNOW who teaches 5 year olds. They do not need to be on Twitter to participate. They do not need to share any information more specific than their country. They just need to spend 10 minutes answering the questions, and then continue to spread the word.

When you complete the form, you will get a link to see the results. Bookmark that page, because we have a feeling the results are going to get pretty darn interesting as we get more and more responses. 

You need the link again? OK, HERE IT IS.

From the bottom of our geeky, curious, nosy little hearts: Thank you.

Oh, wait, if we want this to be Pinterest-friendly, we need an image, don't we?

Okay, here you go, It's like data, done with crayons. Perfect.

What's that, you need the link again? Ok, CLICK HERE.

With so much love;

Amy & Heidi

Kinderchat Welcomes PBS Kids!!!

We are SO EXCITED to welcome 

to next week's

Monday April 8th 9PM New York time!

Please join Matt Gomez and the "Team Tech" crew to talk technology and math with 

PBS Kids! 

WOW!

Policy Perspective: The Poles

(Heidi's perspective, suburban, private school teacher)

First off, I just have to say how much I admire Meg’s passion, interest, knowledge and experience on the topic of Policy. She has inspired and fueled me to begin this journey into policy-land, although thank goodness I’m not a blogger as it has taken me this long to write a response to her wonderful piece! (Though I’m afraid our March blog bookends are in no way in like lions and out like lambs!) :D

One of the things I love the most about Kinderchat is how it brings together many different voices and experiences. Each one of us brings a unique perspective and set of tools to the table. It’s as if each week we return to the table to unload and share the newest gems stored up in our pockets. Meg’s first hand experience in a Head Start classroom is extremely valuable to the community and to this conversation in particular. And even more so, because my own experience pretty much cannot be more different!

I have taught in an upper class community in a private school my entire teaching career. So not only is it a low/no poverty community, coincidentally with excellent public schools, I teach in maybe the top 10% economic bracket of that already top tier. Private school tuition makes your eyes water if you are a person of average means. The cost per pupil is staggering in comparison to public school cost per pupil, in some cases private school tuition literally doubles or triples what even high spending districts are spending per pupil. And private schools are fundraising pretty much all of the time. It seems it’s never enough.

In contrast to mine and more in line with Meg’s experience, my Mom teaches Special Education in the neighboring high poverty town and is well versed in how policy makes its way into the classroom. She’s had to switch curriculums pretty much every other year for the last 10 years while I’ve had time to craft and perfect my own. Her students might get beat for losing a mitten, my student’s Mom owns a mitten-making boutique. Her students have parents in jail, my students have nannies and housekeepers. Her students get beat up everyday walking home from school until they relent and join the gang, my students are picked up in Range Rovers and driven to horseback riding lessons. She juggles students with severe emotional and learning issues, my students are asked to leave if there’s too severe an issue for the school to handle. She writes multi-page detailed lesson plans all weekend while I just keep a monthly desk calendar. Mom and Meg, I’m not sure I could do it!

There seems to me to be some very dangerous and sad trends in policy making of recent, with labels being thrown out of “failing schools” and “bad teachers”. Everyone is failing it seems, except the folks out there creating the “bad policy”. I always go back to this quote from W Edwards Deming "The problem is not the worker, the problem is at the top." Everyone seems to be racing there, but those actually at the top certainly aren't talking about the Common Core.

These facts of disparity are not secrets and if they are, well, they shouldn’t be. The facts may not be as sexy as big data, but data are just a bunch of numbers when not contextualized by the facts of life for millions of Young Children. I hope through these discussions with Meg we begin open up a more honest and in depth dialogue of the reality and impact of policy and the reality of school experiences for our youngest learners.

Heidi is from New Jersey and can be found on twitter at @hechternacht She blogs for kids here.

Policy Perspective: A Beginning

Before Amy and I began Kinderchat, we outlined five clear goals. Goal one reads: To facilitate discussions among Educators, Parents, Policy Makers and the Public about Best Practices in Early Childhood Education. I know I speak for Amy when I say how proud we are to have helped facilitate almost three years of dialogue among so many dynamic, professional and talented educators. 

I have always subscribed to the belief that form follows function when developing this world of, by and for educators. When we were overflowing with links to incredible Early Childhood Blogs, we made the Kinderchat Early Childhood Blog Directory. It is from this place of timing and authentic need that we spring to action. 

So, somehow, somewhere, we are being called to action to begin more authentic and engaged dialogue in the world of Early Childhood Educational Policy. I know, I never thought I'd be saying it either, but here we are. We have decided to undertake this endeavor in stages, the first being an ongoing dialogue led by US teachers Meg Sexton and Heidi Echternacht with comments encouraged by all in the International Kinderchat community.

To help you (and me! watch out! I'm learning!) we have created a Directory of US Early Childhood Organizations. We encourage your comments and participation to help us begin an authentic dialogue in this area. Please let us know if you'd like to contribute to the conversation in a guest post! 

@TeacherMeg opens the dialogue here:

Meg’s Perspective (the urban United States Head Start teacher and child development grad student perspective)

When I graduated undergrad with my teaching certificate and big plans of moving to Chicago to teach, I was quite unaware of the policy world.  I thought that policy was something that applied strictly to the government world, was dull, and had nothing to directly do with me. As I spent my first two years teaching (and struggling!) in an underserved neighborhood school, I began to think that there was more to the story of teaching than my students and my classroom, but couldn’t piece it together.  

I later transitioned into teaching within a community center in a Head Start classroom. This is when policy pushed (shoved!) itself right into my practice. Head Start is a federally funded preschool program directed towards children and families who have the biggest economic need. It’s a 2 1/2 hour program that incorporates meals, parent education and involvement, health services and more into the requirements. This is where it begins to get tricky. Since it is a 1 1/2 hour program and most of the children we serve need full day care, Head Start is very often combined with state and/or private funding within one classroom, not to mention child care licensing standards.  All of these various stakeholders who fund the program have different requirements of the teachers and administration in terms of documentation. Also? Not every child in a classroom falls under the same funding source. So I had to know and follow procedures for several different funders and provide documentation (read lots of paperwork) for each one of the stakeholders. That’s policy pushing its way into the classroom.  And the thing is this happens not just in the childcare centers and Head Start programs. Policy pushes its way into the public and private schools as well.  Policy is what dictates what we must teach, how much we must teach, how much prep time we get and on and on. Because the requirements from funders dictate so much of our day, it is necessary for teachers to understand policy, it has everything to do with us, contrary to what I once believed.

Part of what drives me to try and make sense of policy is that logistical piece of it; if I want the programs I work in to keep getting funding, I had better comply with the paperwork they request. I’ve also recently come to the realization that policy also directly connects to the social justice of early care and education. We need to know where the money is coming from so that we can advocate for our families when budgets are cut and our programs are threatened.  As a part of that, we need to make ourselves familiar with the organizations that provide policy guidance and advocacy. Beyond that, we need to forge relationships with these organizations so that we can engage in dialogue with them.  These organizations have a lot of influence over how policy is structured and enacted and many of them provide guidance on what is developmentally appropriate practice. It is our responsibility to be aware. We must learn who the major players are behind funding sources. Not only so that we are able to see who is driving education and social service policies, but so that we can dig deeper and look at the different agendas that may be behind the many policy shifts.  

I strongly believe that we need to practice being reflective and critical consumers of policy.  Whether it be a new program initiative, a curriculum mandate, or a new assessment, we need to look at the issue in a more intimate manner and tease the different strands apart. We also need to be open to the grey area; we need to look at an issue and know that not everything is polarized to either side, but that every issue is extremely complex and multidimensional.  It is not comfortable in the grey area, it’s a bit squirmish, but we need to be okay with that. Policy is complex and just like life, there is no black or white-only grey. Worry not! It is within this grey area of discomfort that conversations emerge, and from those conversations ideas, and from those ideas, action.  

Meg Sexton comes to us from Chicago and can be found on Twitter @teachermeg and blogs at playfulencounters.blogspot.com. She is a certified PreK-3rd grade teacher with experience teaching preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. She is currently a graduate student studying child development within the context of both changing the nature of teacher professional development and focusing on the whole development of the child in helping teachers reflect on the choices they make within their classrooms.

Say "cheerio," not "goodbye."

Aaaaannnnndddd..... it's over.

Here we are, the last day of NaBloPoMo. This month has been AMAZING, and I have loved every minute of reading and writing and editing and posting, and watching the tweets and comments fly. Whether you wrote for us this month, or read every post, or commented, or tweeted, or jumped into conversations, you are all amazing. Every last one of you. Yes, even you. And YOU.

That said, I have definitely learned that, in some ways, managing nearly 30 different authors can be as labour-intensive as writing 30 of my own posts. This month has given me lots of ideas about how to manage guest posts on an ongoing basis, and even how I would manage another NaBloPoMo (but, let's be clear, not for another few months. I need some time to soak it all in, and my own blog is in need of some attention, too!)

So, although I cannot promise daily new content for some time, please do stick around. I promise we  have great stuff coming up soon.

But for now: I am mostly excited to wake up in the morning and NOT check/edit/read/tweet/facebook a new post.

And now, for my fellow musical theatre geeks:

So long, fare thee well

Pip! Pip! Cheerio!

We'll be back soon.

Lots of love;

Amy

I Bet You Didn't Know! Kind Words Make A Rainbow

This post comes from Heidi Echternacht, a Kindergarten Teacher in New Jersey.

Fresh on the heels of Monday night’s Kinderchat discussion on schools, teachers, students and guns- (Sorry! It still sounds to me like a “One of These Things is Not Like the Other” song from Sesame Street!) led by the brave and fabulous “Team Indigo”, here is a post on fostering the process of Peace in the Classroom Community.

The Problem Solving Center:
One of my favorite moments in the Early Childhood Classroom- or any classroom for that matter- is the inevitable argument. “That’s mine!”, “I had it first!”, “It isn’t fair!”, “She always gets it!” Yes, young children and governments alike are well versed in these discrepancies.

As soon as Free Play starts, it’s Prime Time for these issues to appear. Wonderful! Yes, wonderful! Each and every argument is opportunity. A gold mine of opportunity to practice solving problems, dialoguing, self-control, friendship and creativity. In my classroom community, dealing with arguments are not catch-as-catch-can but highly focused and driven by predictable procedures.

Official Procedure for Dialogue:

1. Both parties of the argument (or all) are immediately asked to remove themselves   from the Play area and retreat to the “Problem Solving Center”

2. If there is crying, there is absolutely no talking until all parties have calmed down

3. I ask “Do you need my help?” to both parties. If they agree “no” I remove myself with the understanding that they conclude the conversation (see number 5)

4. If my assistance is needed, I listen to each side of the story, feeding dialogue as needed.

• Student A: “I was angry when you said I was a kitkando* and I hit and I made a bad mistake.”
• Student B: “I was angry when you took my toy and so I called you a kitkando”
• Student A: “I got that toy first, though”
• Teacher: “We only have one (truck) what can you do?” Or in extra heated discussions, I will claim the truck. “That truck is my truck and I am sharing it with the class. I don’t like it when kids fight over my toys. I don’t want my truck hurt. I’m putting it up here until you two can figure this out”
• This usually freaks out both parties just enough for them to quickly dig up a solution to share or take turns or whatever they need to do in order to have the privilege of using my toys.
• Student A: “Here, you can go first. Can I use it after you?”
• Teacher: makes a big deal- “WOW! Thank you for those kind words! You are a problem solver!”
• Student B: “How about we share it?”
• Teacher: “Wow! I see rainbows everywhere! This is amazing!” (I bet you didn’t know kind words make rainbows, did you?!)

original photo by Heidi Echternacht

5. All conversations are concluded by shaking hands, “Friends again”, smiles or hugs. If the party is still angry, they are asked to stay in problem solving and the other party is asked to go back to playing ie:

• Student A: “I’m still angry and I don’t’ feel like talking now” (facilitated dialogue)
• Student B: “I’ll come back later to talk when you are ready” (facilitated dialogue)

The Center:
The design of the problem solving area is important. It must be a quiet and somewhat removed area of the classroom. There are “Feelings Books” and photos of children expressing various feelings posted around the area. The puppets live here and there are two chairs that sit facing each other to indicate that this is an area for dialogue. For fun, there is an “Easy” button from Staples they can push at the end of the discussion. I have also added a good stick from outside the Peacemaker is allowed to sand with sandpaper.

Peacemaker? Yes! A new job this year, one child is designated “Peacemaker” and is called on to solve (minor) issues. I am there for the major ones of course, but it has worked really well to give added responsibility to the peer group. I probably need to ring a bell when the peacemaker ends up in an argument too! Who said Early Childhood isn’t a microcosm of the world’s problems?!

Once this structure is firmly in place, it helps the day go incredibly smoothly. There are no interruptions to the play and the children’s problems and arguments are taken seriously and addressed by both the teacher and community. Students emerge stronger leaders with the tools of dialogue and ability to creatively look for solutions. Make one in your room and see what happens! 

*no one actually knows what a kitkando is, other than it’s bad. Nonsense name calling upsets are my favorite!

Heidi Echternacht CoFounded Kinderchat with Amy Murray in the summer of 2010. You can check out her website here.

What does your classroom say about you?

Today's post is from @carriemarshall1, a teacher on the East Coast of Canada.

If someone were to walk into your classroom while you were out, what would they think about you? What kind of a teacher do your walls say that you are? What are your values and beliefs? All of these work together to become our "hidden curriculum." I was originally introduced to this concept when I was working on my first degree back in the mid-late 80's. Of all of the ideas I was introduced to then, that (and the role of play) resonated the most with me. It resonated because I believe it is true. What I value, what I believe, those things come out not only in what I choose to put on the walls, how I arrange my room, but also how I choose to teach.

I claim to teach with an integrated curriculum, making sure what we are learning is not taught in an isolated way, but showing my children how math, science, literacy, etc. are all interconnected.
As this year has rolled on, I have been reflecting on my walls and my room. What does my room say about me? My response has caused me to make some minor changes to my room. I have opened it up, tearing down the artificial dividers that I had put up between my "centres". So, instead of having a science centre, an art centre, and a math centre, I have a space for all of these but it is much less defined. Because I see the interconnectedness in all three of these areas, and I want my students to see that connection as well. Because I see the interconnectedness of the world, I want my students to see that too. I "tore down the walls" figuratively, and I opened up my classroom. 




This is an older photo of my room. It is still pretty open, but what I ended up doing was taking all of those shelves that separated the areas and moved them up against the walls or shifted them in such a way as to give the room a bit more flow without making it one large open space.  By opening up the classroom, the students are forced to integrate our subjects because they are all in the same area. The sand and blocks also blend quite nicely in as well.

But, opening my room up was only part of my "integrated revival". I began to critically look at my curriculum and how I was approaching teaching. I am a lover of science. I enjoy all of the fun experiments we can do, I love to bring nature indoors and the class outdoors. I love investigating ideas about how and why things work. But as I reflected on my day, I noticed I was not highlighting this love. The more I began to read, the more I was convinced I could reignite this love of science without sacrificing the literacy and mathematics goals set forth by the department of education. I have always had a science journal, but I realized I was not utilizing the journal as best as I could. It had become more of a filler activity. Now, much more of our daily writing is centred around what we are investigating in science. When we talk about patterns, we shift over to the science area and see the patterns in nature through leaves, shells, starfish. 



Teaching is always a work in progress. I believe that when we stop reflecting on our teaching, we stop being relevant to our students. So I continue to reflect on ways to integrate my classroom. I reflect on what my walls are saying. Right now, I hope my walls are saying, "This is the classroom that values all of its members. It shows in what she has on the wall, how the room is arranged, and what is written in the science journals." I hope my walls show value and respect, because that is what I have for my kids.

Carrie Marshall is a wife, a mother, and a teacher. Born in the midwest, she now resides on the East Coast of Canada. She has been teaching in the area of early childhood for 23 years, 9 of those years in kindergarten.

Aristotle and Me: A philosopher for the 21st Century Educator?

Today's post is by @debmeredith13, a kindergarten teacher in Chicago.

So what does Aristotle have to do with my job as a kindergarten teacher?  

Learning targets, formative assessments, PLCs, 21st Century Skills, 1-1 iPad initiatives, The Common Core State Standards, Project-based learning, checking in on my Personal Learning Network and the ever-pressing challenge of increasing student achievement are at the top of my list.  So why would I choose to add Greek Philosophy?  Why?  Ah, the best critical thinking question of them all…why.  Would it be convolutedly clear for me to suggest that the why is why Aristotle is on my list?  Let me explain

If Aristotle were here in our 21st century, looking at my aforementioned list, I believe he would say: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”  Now, since I am in the business of educating minds, I need to do some serious thinking about that one….

You may be speculating that I am about to face a big dilemma: How do I entertain the expectations for teaching and learning and student achievement on my list with an educated mind of my own?  How do I entertain every new district initiative, possible new assessment method, view all of those super-cute looking projects that my teacher friends are pinning on Pinterest, read a great blog post and not try it?   You’ve all been there – we are in such a rapidly evolving communicatin society that the volumes of ideas available to us are breathtaking…and overwhelming.  At this point in time, it is more important than ever to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.  To do this I believe you must have a philosophy: a clear vision of what you do and why you are doing it, of what you believe and why.  And thanks to John Hattie (more about him later) you can no longer say, “Because it works for me.”  Here are some of the modern day thinkers (my Arisotoles, if you will) that I turn to when I need to entertain a thought.  Oh, and I’m sure you will ask…why?

Who:  Dan Pink author of Drive

Why:  I want my students to have ownership of their learning and their behavior, but what if a school-wide incentive program to increase desired student behavior becomes the policy in my district? 

Dan Pink writes, “A lot of the research shows …these policies [external rewards]can actually impair creativity. But at most, they’re a big zero. They don’t do anything. It’s very clear they don’t work very well for higher-order thinking, so we’re basically putting in place these policies based on the folklore about what motivates human beings rather than the science. There’s this push toward data-driven, evidence-based practices, but in this one realm of motivation, we’re kind of ignoring it. We have 50 years of research that says, ‘This is unlikely to work.’”

Who: Debbie Miller, author of Reading With Meaning (second edition)

Why:  Sometimes I just want to close my door and teach.  What difference can I make? 

Debbie Miller writes: “When we know the theory behind our work, when our practices match our beliefs, and when we clearly articulate what we do and why we do it, people listen… Read. Reflect. Read some more.”   Ms. Miller implores us to do more than think that something isn’t right.  Speak out about your thinking, say it out loud.  Be an activist and an advocate, not for fidelity to a program, but for fidelity to doing what is right for children.

Who: John Medina, author of Brain Rules

Why: Brain-based classroom?  Really?

John Medina writes: “If you want to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing you probably would design something like a classroom.  If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle.  And if you want to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.”

Who:  Carol Dweck, Author of Mindset

Why: The new Common Core State Standards are asking us to adopt a more rigorous curriculum, even in kindergarten.  Is it developmentally appropriate?

Carol Dweck writes: “ Many educators think that lowering their standards will give students success experiences, boost their self-esteem and raise their achievement, it comes from the same philosophy as the overpraising of student intelligence.  Well, it doesn’t work.  Lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise.”  (Ooops, I think this may apply to teacher evaluations as well.)

Who: Lucy Calkins, author of Pathways to the Common Core

Why: The Common Core tells me what children need to learn, but it doesn’t tell me the best instructional delivery model to use.

Lucy Calkins writes about using a workshop model for delivery of reading and writing instruction,: “workshops are kept deliberately simple and predictable, like an art studio or a researcher’s laboratory, because it is the work itself that is ever changing and complex…Each day’s teaching in a workshop does not set up a new hoop for the students to all jump through in sync.  Instead, the bulk of time during each day, students carry on with their work.  As they do so, they draw upon a growing repertoire of skills, tools, strategies, and habit.”

 

And finally, my Aristotle, John Hattie:

Who: John Hattie, visionary, researcher extraordinaire, and author of Visible Learning.

Why: When you need to make an important philosophical decision about new initiatives, projects, methods or just about anything else…  Read. John. Hattie.  He has done the research on all of the research.  And he found out that almost everything we do in education works…but since you can’t do everything, you’d better find out what really has an effect on student achievement (it might surprise you).

So, now I will close with a full-circle back to those Greek philosophers.  This time it’s good old Socrates: “ I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.”

It is my hope that I gave you something to think about.

Deb Meredith is 30+ year educator.  In her life as an educator she has taught everything from a 2 year-old playgroup to High School Math.   She now finds herself happily teaching Kindergarten in suburban Chicago.  Thanks for the opportunity to join the Kinderchat blog.  It’s a pleasure and privilege to contribute.

I would love to entertain any thoughts you may have dmeredith@glenview34.org

Genius Hour: Is this possible in a kindergarten class?

Today's post is from @jpulvers, a kindergarten teacher in British Columbia, Canada.

"Genius Hour" is a relatively new term in education, but has been around in the business world for a few years. Organizations such as Google have an 80/20 work week, where employees are given 20% of their work week to "explore" things that interest them. Many brilliant ideas have come out of that 20%.

The short version on the education side goes something like this: In July of 2011, Daniel Pink wrote a blog about how a Credit Union in Washington was using "Genius Hour" with their employees. These employees were given time each week to use as a "Genius Hour" to pursue their passions. Angela Maiers saw this blog and re-tweeted it and suggested we need this in schools for teachers.  Denise Krebs spread this information via Twitter and her blog, both of which were discovered by Hugh McDonald  and Gallit Zvi  who were keen to try the idea in their classrooms. I work with Gallit and Hugh and their passion is contagious! More info about "Genius Hour" will be included at the end of this blog.

Gallit is my buddy teacher and our classes often do projects together. The more time I spent with her and Hugh and see how engaged their students were during "Genius Hour", the more I contemplated trying it with my class. But I was plagued by thought like, "They have ideas, but they can't research them...they can't even read" and "how would they share their learning when they can't write sentences yet".  I am very fortunate to work with an amazing group of people who are always making me question my practice and push me to try new things. My co-workers are always encouraging me think outside the box and they never let me "get away with" excuses like the ones mentioned above. Many of our conversations end with "well, why can't you do this?" These conversations make my head spin, leaving me to come up with ways to modify things to the K level. As my principal Antonio Vendramin,  tweeted last week, "It's all about the What if... rather than the Ya, but..."

I am not one to back down from a challenge, so driving home one day thinking about how to make this happen - it hit me! We can use our buddies to help us with the "research" and we can use the Book Creator app on the iPads to create books about an animal that  interests them. I knew I would need more help, so I recruited our amazing teacher-librarian Anna Crosland and asked her if she wanted to be a part of this "experiment" with my K class. Anna jumped on board and the 3 of us (Anna, Gallit and I) developed a plan. This activity was done in April/May of last year.

1)  I would make a Sample eBook with my class. This took about 3 lessons. For this book, we used Penguins as that was the last animal we studied and we made a pages for habitat, food, enemies and 3 interesting facts. We took pictures and recorded the sentence using the Book Creator app.  Here is our class book.



2) Gallit had her class write and produce stories using Book Creator to share with my class as way of teaching them how to use the app.  My class LOVED "reading" the stories their big buddies made on the iPads. Here is a sample of a book written by our buddies!



3) I asked each student in my class to pick an animal that they wanted to know more about. I gave the list to Anna, and she pulled many books on each animal for us. We set aside a 45 minute block for the next 5 weeks where both classes would meet in the library to develop their books. The idea was that the big buddies were there to guide the little buddy through the research part and assist them with putting their books together. We came up with criteria for what information should be included in the eBook and that each page needed to have 3 components:

1. A photo taken by the little buddy.
2. A sentence scribed by the big buddy.
3. A voice recording by the little buddy talking about the page.

I was a bit skeptical at first as to how well this project was going to work, but looking back on it now, EVERYONE  was on task and excited to be learning. The big buddies were so happy to "teach" their little buddies and the little buddies were so excited to be "researchers". There was no fooling around, no conversations that were off topic and everyone was learning something! All the doubts I had were erased when I saw how hard everyone was working and how upset they were that the work period was up! Here are some samples of finished work.

When this student started the year, she was just learning English and wasn't that comfortable speaking. Listen to how confident she sounds now talking about Cats.



Adaptations were made so that every student could participate. Here is a wonderful book from student with Autism, who has come so far since the start of the year. Here is a video of his Elephant book.





After working hard on our eBooks, we took the time to share each and every one of the books. The students were all so proud of how hard they worked and sharing their books was a highlight for everyone. What is the point of making a book, if only the teacher is ever going to see it? Having an authentic audience gave everyone a real purpose for completing the task to the best of their ability.


This is a project that I am going to do with my students again this Spring. I am so excited to give them ownership of their learning. After all, they should be learning about their passions, not mine!! With a bit of thinking outside the box, modifying for the needs of the students, anything is possible in a Kindergarten class - even a modified Genius Hour!!

For more information on Genius Hour, follow Gallit @gallit_z, Hugh @hughtheteacher and Denise @mrsdkrebs on Twitter. Also check out #geniushour chat on Twitter the first Wednesday of the month at 9pm EST  and the Genius Hour wiki. Gallit has also posted some articles on her blog about integrating technology and introducing Genius Hour.

Jodi is a Kindergarten teacher in Surrey, BC, who loves to use push her students to try new things - dancing, singing and using iPads to explore their passions. Her blog is jodipulvers.blogspot.ca