A day in the life of the 21st century classroom

Bursting through the door of their kindergarten classroom, the students in Mrs. Getty’s class quickly say hello to their teacher and hang up their backpacks before heading to the computers to find their name and select if they are having hot or cold lunch for the day. This will send an alert not only to the kitchen, but also to the office that those children are indeed here for the day. When finished, the students grab their writing journals and look to the SMART Board for their writing prompt. Mrs. Getty has recorded herself saying each word in the prompt and has added it as a sound button for the students that are not able to read the entire sentence yet. Steven struggles to sound out the word ‘favorite’ so he goes to the board and touches the word. Mrs. Getty’s voice flows through the speakers and any student struggling with that word now knows what it says.
The journals are put away and calendar time begins. Using a calendar template from the SMART Board gallery, the students take turns selecting the month and day of the week from a list the teacher has created on the calendar and drag them into the correct boxes. One student is selected to write in the dates and another writes in the year. When the calendar is finished the students sing the ABC ‘s along with a slideshow they helped their teacher make using Microsoft Movie Maker. In the show, teams of kids formed the letters with their bodies and the teacher took a picture. Using a USB recording device, she then recorded the children saying the letter and the sound it makes. The students watch this slideshow nearly every day and have yet to get bored of seeing and hearing themselves on the big screen.
When math time begins the students are excited to find out that today is a day for math place centers. Five centers are set up around the room and the students are able to visit the centers of their choice. A few of today’s choices are the ‘Beat You To 25” game where students spin a spinner that has different amounts of pennies. On their boards they trade five pennies for a nickel and play until they have five nickels that they can trade for a quarter. Another favorite center is the sea creature estimation center. In partners, one student reaches into a bucket of plastic sea creature toys and pulls out a large handful. Both students have a paper with 3 ten frames on it. They fill in the number of squares on the ten-frame to represent their estimate. Together the pair count the sea creatures by placing them onto bigger ten frames to see who had the closest guess. Mrs. Getty walks around the room with her notebook in hand and notes that Brayden is counting by tens, but his partner is still counting each toy by ones. This method for math had proven to be successful for the students in many ways, but some parents were concerned that no math worksheets were coming home. In the weekly newsletter sent to each parent’s Email and posted on the classroom webpage, Mrs. Getty makes sure to describe the learning goals and occasionally includes short video clips of the students playing their math games or explaining a concept. Monthly, students also get to take home a homework version of one of the month’s games. Instructions are included, but it is the student’s job to teach someone at home how to play the game. The positive feedback from parents has slowly been increasing.
After the math games have been cleaned up, the students gather on the carpet for reading. In the traditional manner, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is read and the students are asked to pay special attention to the foods that are eaten. When the story is finished the class heads to the computer lab. Using a kid’s drawing software that the students have been learning during computer time, each child is asked to remember 3 foods the caterpillar ate and do their best to draw those foods using the software. As they finish up and print their pictures, Mrs. Getty encourages students to sound out the words and write the food names next to the pictures. With only ten minutes until lunch, the students that are not finished are instructed to save their work to finish later. Back in the classroom, a few students are selected to display their work for the other students on the big screen using the document camera before heading off to lunch.