Twister…I mean Kindergarten

Had my first Kindergarten classes as a technology teacher this week and it was an experience.  First of all, I should note that I currently do not have a class set of computers in my room.  Due to some changes at our school, many of our classrooms needed computers so I offered that they could use the ones in the lab.  I have an ulterior motive, of course, I’m trying to get some flexible seating and make the lab a truly creative space.  I’m happy to not have rows of tables and desktop computers.  But, for now, I am doing lessons about technology but not necessarily using technology.

Anyway, last week I got 10 of the desktop computers back because they could not be utilized properly in the area they were sent to.  At first, I was a little annoyed but did not have a choice in the matter so I now have 6 tables and 10 desktop computers in the room.  It got me thinking about what I could do with them.  Luckily for me, our K classes are at right around 20 kids so it is the perfect number to be able to split the classes in half!  My idea was, for the first lesson, to give students in one-half of the group an activity they could pretty much do on their own and then be able to help the other half practice logging into the computers.

I decided that I needed a fun way to reinforce the crazy, long, computer numbers the students have to use so I searched the internet and found handwritingpractice.net.  It was perfect!  I was able to create awesome, traceable and colorable worksheets with the student’s names and computer numbers.  It took hours to create and print individual worksheets for each child but once they were done I was super excited about using them.  Here’s an example of what they looked like.

I spent the first part of class reviewing some basic tech knowledge for the technology bingo game they will eventually play and then split the class and each group spent about 15 minutes on the worksheets and then 15 minutes on the computers.  Every time they were able to log in to the computer correctly I gave them a sticker (which they LOVED) and they were also super excited that they got to keep their papers and take them home.

The first few classes I had were exhausting!  The students were so needy and there was only one of me to go around.  I felt like I was in the middle or a tornado, hurricane and tsunami all at once.  However, as the week went on they got better.  The class I had yesterday was EXACTLY how I pictured the lesson would go.  After yesterday’s class, it dawned on me that when I saw some of my first classes they were experiencing their very first days of school so I have a better understanding now of why things were so crazy.  As the week went on, the students got into more of a routine and each class was better than the next.  I’m looking forward to our next lesson when all of the classes have been in the school routine for a while and should be easier to work with.

I think I will do this same process again next year although I might wait until lesson 2 when all of the classes have a better sense of routine and expectations.