Morning Meetings and Calendar Debate

There is TONS of debate about 'calendar-time' in Kindergarten and what 'calendar-time' should look like within the realm of FDK. The debate is that based on the curriculum, we shouldn't be 'doing calendar' at all as a large group, whole circle lasting longer than 10 minutes. However ... it would be absolutely crazy to throw the calendar out the window because we know how GREAT the calendar is to teach skills such as leadership, counting, patterning and language. So, the debate remains: What is the happy medium?

In our French Kindergarten class, we spend about 20 minutes every day following a 'morning circle' routine. Of which, the calendar only takes up about 5 minutes.  Since students have plenty of opportunity to stand up, stretch, sing, dance, etc. during our 'morning meeting' ... it's not really as long as it sounds.

Students sit in a circle on the carpet and we begin our day by singing 'Bonjour les amis' ... a gesture-filled song that they're getting to know pretty well! After this, I choose about 5 students to ask, "Comment-ca va?" Students are pretty quick to tell me (again using the AIM gesture-approach), "Ca va FANTASTIC!" This is the newest gesture that they've learned so they love showing me that they know it ... not to mention, the action for the word is pretty intense! We choose a 'Chef du jour' by giving clues to what they're wearing, how many syllables are in their name, etc ... After the Chef du jour is chosen, we direct students to the table centres to 'draw' the Chef du jour and they try to write his/her name. The picture that the Chef draws of him/herself is pinned up on the wall. As of today, there are about 15 self-portraits on the wall - some very proud Chefs!

These students are hard at work drawing their 'Chef'

Once the portraits are finished, students gather at the carpet again for 'calendar'. My teaching partner suggested that students bring home their 'Chef books' so we staple all of the drawings together, put a cover page on it and send it home! Students love looking through them throughout the day (during read-to-self time) and it serves as a nice safekeep! Next on the agenda ... the 'Chef' picks a pointer and leads the class in counting the days of the month (sometimes hand-over-hand). After this, we talk about the month and the letters in the month. We've been singing a cute little jingle to help with this, titled "O-C-T-O-B-R-E".

And it goes a little somethin' like this (to the tune of Frere Jaques):

O-C-T-O-B-R-E

 

B-R-E

 

B-R-E

 

O-C-T-O-B-R-E

 

C'est le mois d'Octobre

 

Here is a link to the song lyrics (can I even call them lyrics?!) so that you can just print them off if you love them! Click here for link

 

Here's a sound clip of my students singing our cute little jingle:

 

 

I had to 'black out' the video (but left the audio) because we have a new student in the class and they don't have 'photo permission' yet! I also wanted to mention that this clip was recorded as students were coming back to the carpet after their 'Chef' drawing ... Students were asked to 'look at a book' but these boys went over to the chart paper and started singing away pointing to the words on the chart paper... Not exactly what I asked them to do, but nevertheless... I captured their interest and encouraged them to keep going!!

 

The calendar routine is usually followed by a read-aloud or a shared reading. If our bodies are too squirmy, then we go right to table centres and I call students to the carpet in small groups to do reading.

 

Stay tuned for what reading and writing looks like and sounds like in our French Kindergarten class!! 

 

 

TTFN!

 

 





Pin It