Duda's Room

Duda is a wonderful friend of Jan's who teaches preschool at the International School; Mihailo is in her class and he loves it! I asked Duda if I could come into her classroom to observe her. I also wrote down ideas I get from her and the students' work on the walls. In her class there are only 8 students! As a teacher, could you imagine? Duda says she wishes there were more because when there are too few it is as hard as it would be to have 20 students! Apparently there are class sizes that are too small and too big; I have found from working with Duda and also teaching 18 to 20 students a good class size should be between 12 to 16 students; this is for the younger grades.

Morning Routines:
In the mornings, the students have to come in and write their names on a piece of paper and tape their names on one of the emotions on "the Emotions chart." It has to do with their PYP program. It is an International Baccalaureate program called the Primary Years Programme; which is like a problem solving program for students. You should check out the website! It is great!

Morning Meeting:
For their morning meeting, the students have to sit in a circle just like we would back in the states. Sometimes they will do a greeting and other times they will not. One they did was the "talking ball" which they tossed to their friends saying "Hello! How are you? How are you feeling?" (it was a connection with the Emotions/Feeling PYP unit they were working on). It was really cute and because they had to repeat the words, all the EAL students had to practice saying these words and listen to other students say them as well.

After the greeting, the first things Duda does is have the students change their names on the helper chart. There are only three jobs: line leader, helper, and caboose. There are letters on the back of their names, H, C, L and they have to tally which helper chore they are doing, so Duda and the students can keep track. It is a great way to keep track of how many times a student has done a helper chore. After the helpers are chosen, Duda then takes the days off the calendar and passes them out to students, they need to give her the correct day to put up on the chart. It is a great trick to getting them to pay attention and also it helps them learn the days. On the Calendar, there were patterns, numbers, and the helper had to find out the next shape in the pattern and the number. The students are the ones who write the numbers on the shape to put on the calendar. They have a resource just above the calendar, which they use to help them (they are big numbers, so the students can trace them with their finger and then draw them).

Ideas:
Number and ABC lines. The students get a scroll of a number or ABC line, but the blocks or squares are empty and the students need to find the correct letter or number from a pile in the middle and put them in order on their blank lines. They students work in pairs or in thirds and try to put it together. There are resources for the students to look at only if they are stuck and they love it! I plan on making this as a center when I get back!

Duda has this felt board book here that has different habitats on each page and they students have to put the correct animals in the right habitat. I thought of you Christy, Janis, and Judy when I say it! :) It is called "Discovering Animal Habitats." It is perfect for Kindergarten and First, but I think the second graders would love it as well!

A Little Side Note:
The pre-K here is very different from the pre-K back home, but also it is similar in some ways. The students learn through lots of play; the ideas and work are all student ideas, but back in the states they is much more structure and teacher led lessons. I am not saying one is better then the other; I am just stating things I have learned through my experiences. I do like how Duda gives the students supplies and tells them the end result, but then they have to figure out how to get there; for example, they had to make a 3-D square and she gave them supplies, showed them what their final project will be, but then just let them go. It was amazing to see what they came up with. Now I watched a few other projects being done like this and I had a hard time with just letting them go, but they were teaching them a bigger lesson, which is to be problem solvers because that is something they will have to do for the rest of their lives. Although I loved this part of the International school, I also really like that in the states there is more structure, so the kids are not getting too much down time because there are a lot of kids in the classrooms back in the states and the structure is needed. I would like to build a classroom with both the student led lessons and also the structure of the Maine schools; it would be a perfect school in my mind.

Also at the international school their is a lot more cultural differences which makes is exciting, and I feel that students in the states need to learn more about the cultural differences of other people. Pen Pals is a great idea I came up with between the two schools. It would help the students be more diversified in the states especially in Maine and it would also help the international students reach out and learn new things about students from a different continent. I mean with skype and all...there are so many possibilities. Just to keep in mind there is a 6 hour differences, so the time of skyping in school would be 8am Maine time and 2:00pm Serbian time.

Duda's RESOURCES:

• PreKinders: Resources for Pre-K Teachers It has everything you could imagine and it is great for Pre-Kindergarten teachers!
• Every Printable you could imagine: PRINTABLES

If anyone wants to know more about any of the programs or anything please just comment on here or email me and I will get more information to you!