Week Eight Review: Differentiated Kindergarten a Blog by Marsha McGuire
While I was on Pinterest today I kept seeing a lot of great pins from Marsha McGuire’s blog. Marsha’s blog is called Differentiated Kindergarten. Marsha describes herself as a "teacher-mom” whose goal is “to meet the needs of all of her students through fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate activities.” Her blog is full of so many resources that could be helpful for any teacher, but particularly she focuses on resources for kindergarten teachers.
A couple of posts on Marsha’s blog caught my eye right away! One of these posts was called Fine Motor Morning Workstations in Action. This post is about the kinds of morning workstations Marsha has in her classroom in the beginning if the school year. The students go to these stations in the beginning of the day instead of having to do worksheets for morning work. These stations are still accomplishing the same goal as worksheets would, however, the stations are more developmentally friendly and interactive. Marsha talks about how she teaches the students how to go about using the stations early on in the year so that the students know how to do them on their own. Each of the stations in the beginning of the school year are working on developing the much-needed fine motor skills. Marsha utilized a lot of really interesting techniques within the stations. For example one of the stations was cutting up a plastic straw, another was using a hole punch to punch as many holes into a piece of paper as possible. These stations progress throughout the school year depending upon what they’re studying and the development of the kindergartners.
Another one of Marsha’s post that really stood out to me was called The Joy of On-Going Assessments in Kindergarten. This post really stood out to me, as a future to kindergarten teacher (hopefully) assessments are something I am really concerned about. In kindergarten assessments are extremely important but somewhat tricky to carry out. Marsha recommends always doing ongoing assessments throughout the year. This post included a really informative picture describing what differentiated assessments are. It also included some advice about how to carry out assessments: instruct your students, assess your students, adjust your instruction, and then repeat over and over as needed. She also talked about ESGI which is a software she uses to keep track of her ongoing assessments. Marsha says that the software really helps to streamline assessments while keeping them organized and simple. She includes a link to a free trial for the software and coupons for later on when you go to purchase ESGI. It seems like a great tool that would be really helpful in making sure you’re actively assessing your students.
I could spend hours on this blog looking at all the wonderful resources Marsha provides. The posts are really informative. I definitely recommend checking out this blog and learning some new ways to differentiate classroom instruction.
A couple of posts on Marsha’s blog caught my eye right away! One of these posts was called Fine Motor Morning Workstations in Action. This post is about the kinds of morning workstations Marsha has in her classroom in the beginning if the school year. The students go to these stations in the beginning of the day instead of having to do worksheets for morning work. These stations are still accomplishing the same goal as worksheets would, however, the stations are more developmentally friendly and interactive. Marsha talks about how she teaches the students how to go about using the stations early on in the year so that the students know how to do them on their own. Each of the stations in the beginning of the school year are working on developing the much-needed fine motor skills. Marsha utilized a lot of really interesting techniques within the stations. For example one of the stations was cutting up a plastic straw, another was using a hole punch to punch as many holes into a piece of paper as possible. These stations progress throughout the school year depending upon what they’re studying and the development of the kindergartners.
Another one of Marsha’s post that really stood out to me was called The Joy of On-Going Assessments in Kindergarten. This post really stood out to me, as a future to kindergarten teacher (hopefully) assessments are something I am really concerned about. In kindergarten assessments are extremely important but somewhat tricky to carry out. Marsha recommends always doing ongoing assessments throughout the year. This post included a really informative picture describing what differentiated assessments are. It also included some advice about how to carry out assessments: instruct your students, assess your students, adjust your instruction, and then repeat over and over as needed. She also talked about ESGI which is a software she uses to keep track of her ongoing assessments. Marsha says that the software really helps to streamline assessments while keeping them organized and simple. She includes a link to a free trial for the software and coupons for later on when you go to purchase ESGI. It seems like a great tool that would be really helpful in making sure you’re actively assessing your students.
I could spend hours on this blog looking at all the wonderful resources Marsha provides. The posts are really informative. I definitely recommend checking out this blog and learning some new ways to differentiate classroom instruction.
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