Hey! Hi! How ya doing?

Welcome back, everyone! Why does the weekend fly by!? Nevertheless, here we are back in action.

My innovation project is blended learning in Kindergarten. I’m taking a hard look at adding play-based learning into that title somehow but I haven’t found the right flow yet. I want to implement station rotations using technology, STEM/STEAM, play-based learning, and teacher small group.

I believe my most significant implementation challenge will be holding the students accountable for their learning. That’s currently my hardest challenge right now in the classroom and I think it will continue on even when I implement this.

My classmates could help me with my project by providing different imaginative stations I could provide my students. I’m trying to decide how much I want to rock the boat with my district. I think the correct answer for that, in this course, is rock it as much as you can, but I’m struggling because play based learning is looked down upon in my district. It’s avoided like the plague because “it doesn’t provide data.” Now, I don’t agree with this, but I am guaranteed to get some push back on it. I figure if I can justify what I’m doing, then they will have no valid reason to say no. For example, we have a math unit on financial literacy/personal finance and coins. An obvious suggestion would be to have a store and give the students free reign to explore while still fitting everything within the unit I am teaching. It gets a little tricky when it comes to addition and subtraction and finding a way to give the students the free reign while still saying I’m providing them an opportunity to master our objectives. I hope that made sense because I have a tendency to believe that because I understood it in my own head that everyone else did also...oops!

I think I will be able to help out my classmates by being a willing guinea pig. For instance, Bianca uses scrum and I would love to try that initiative out within my classroom and see what worked and what didn’t. How could it be improved or what she could be able to tell the next kindergarten teacher who wants to give it a go in their classroom. Let me know what you’d like me and my kiddos to try out for you!