itunes in the Kindergarten Classroom

One of the best uses of technology in my Kindergarten classroom this year has been using itunes. Let me give you a little background first. My teaching partner and I have had many discussions about reteaching verses preteaching. Since I am in charge of planning the majority of our math lessons my focus became the amount of reteaching the district was expecting us to do with our new math curriculum. We went to meetings once a month all last year listening to other teacher's frustration with the amount of reteaching needed and the lack of time to do it. So we decided instead of always trying to play "catch up" what if we did a better job introducing skills and focused on preteaching skills/concepts in a way that the students would get some exposure to them before the actual lesson was taught. Which brings me to my itunes plan.

This summer I spent time loading all our CD's that we use for math. Mostly titles by Jack Hartmann or Dr. Jean. I looked at each chapter in the math curriculum and listed the songs that would teach the skills or concepts that the chapter covered. I then looked at what skills/concepts the students were struggling with or needed review on and chose a song to match that. Finally, and most importantly I looked at the skill or concept coming up in the next chapter and chose a song to match that skill/concept. Since our chapters usually go about 3 weeks I have an itunes math folder for each month. As we begin our math lesson time I play a "transition" song that is usually the review/reteaching song. Throughout the lesson, songs are used to teach the current skill/concept of the chapter. Last I play another "transition" song(s) to gather the children for the closure of the lesson. This song is the preteching song for the upcoming skill/concept.

Using my itunes in this way has increased my ability to pace and plan in a more organized manner. I have a better grasp on where students are earlier in the unit. I have much smaller reteaching groups. New lessons go smoothly, as all students have had opportunity to hear about the new material. Students are engaged and eager to participate in the lessons.

This system has really worked for me and feels like a good match for organizing itunes to compliment our math program. My colleague, Lynn has a completely different way of organizing her itunes that she uses for reading. And we both keep other folders which organize our "teaching" songs into different catergories. I would love to hear how others use itunes in the classroom!

New Year....New blog thoughts?

Wow, it has been forever since I thought about blogging. Unfortunately our technology group was required to make a commitment to other professional learning communities this fall so we have not been meeting as regularly as we were last year. We have tried to get together a couple of times this fall to share new ideas, problem solve our new printing technology problems, and to encourage each other to use technology in the classroom in new ways to enhance our teaching methods and hopefully make a difference in the learning process. I think most of the group continues to try to use technology and some are probably doing some "cool" things this year...so fellow Everett bloggers, I hope by getting back on my blog I will inspire you to do the same. Hope to hear from you.