Discussion groups and more!

I am sorry I have been absent for awhile but I have not been feeling to well these past few months.  With that being said, I am officially BACK!  And I have some exciting news...My husband and I are expecting our first child due late August!  The first few months was an awful blessing for me.  I had no energy and could barley keep anything down.  Now I am into my second trimester and I am feeling 90% better.  I hope to keep feeling well enough to continue blogging:).

Now onto the sharing ideas...I recently came across this link during my kindergarten collaboration/discussion group.  It was shared by an awesome colleague of mine.  If you haven't seen this video yet, you have to check it out.

DISCUSSION TOWERS VIDEO

I love the idea of using discussion towers in my classroom.  I have adapted it by giving my students only two-three cubes to help with discussion groups.  My kindergarten students love using cubes to help guide their discussions.  I have to be honest, I was a little skeptical with the new common core objective of participating in collaborative conversations about kindergarten texts with peers.  I thought to myself "No way am I going to be able to keep all of my students on task and observe them confirming and understanding  a particular text."  Well, with the help of my colleagues and a little faith in myself...I am so glad to prove myself wrong.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE working in collaborative student lead conversations about a text and my students do too!

With young learners I know collaborative learning groups can be difficult at times and often students seem to veer off task.   I hope this video is helpful.  With that being said I want to continue  to learn how to help my students better work in groups.  If you have any suggestion or learning experiences of your own while working with our young students in a collaborative group I would love to learn from all of you.

Now, a little late but better late than never.  I completed a Math addition and subtraction assessment that relates to the Kindergarten common core standards.  I use this in my classroom to help assess my students learning.  I have many different worksheets that correlate to each addition and subtraction standard.  You can click on the image below to go directly to my TpT store to download this packet.  But the first TEN bloggers to comment below about student collaborative learning groups will get this packet for FREE!

Until next time friends, see ya soon!