1. By Judy Lesar and Jackie D’Aoust Trevino

3. Project Definition: Using activities in the kindergarten classroom to build community and incorporate academic language to learn content with a special focus on building vocabulary and meaning for English as a Second Language students.

4. Using the curriculum design and direction of Laurie Frank, Carla Hacker and Kathy Hellenbrand with gratitude.

6. We taught students the welcome activity to help our new friends learn names of classmates and feel a part of our classroom community. Students ended the activity with grins on their faces! Processing afterward revealed that they liked the activity very much and it made them feel special. Our new student also participated and we caught him smiling!

8. Following the model of our mentors, we had a class discussion and explored the differences between rules and agreements. In cooperation with the students, we talked about what we valued for our class, came up with our class agreements and transcribed them to display in class.

10. Combining words about friendship in school, learning letter names and working in groups our students performed “The ABC Rap”. The students had to work together in small groups and finish in the large group for the end of the song. It took some cooperation, patience, tolerance (for students with no timing, etc.) to perfect the group rap that we recorded for our student’s parents to enjoy. In the end, the students were very proud of the group performance and the feedback from their parents. We were able to process why it worked after a few setbacks, talk about the mishaps, laughing with and not at each other and using the language of our friendship unit and Second Step curriculum.

15. The “speed” piece of this game took a bit to understand in kindergarten but soon they were embracing the idea of animals that are ‘reptiles” and learning their names and features. Together the group came up with body movements for the reptiles they chose to represent and played the game.

16. A turtle.

17. After they mastered Speed Rabbit we processed the activity with the students. Some things discussed were how they felt when they made a mistake or ended up in the middle. Also we talked about the stress they noticed when they had to perform quickly under the pressure of counting, but that they liked it and had fun. They noticed that feeling stress or nervous is not always bad.

18. Much of our discussion for Second Step and during our friendship unit revolved around the power of kind words and hurtful words. We discussed this and presented some hearts with hurtful and kind words and sorted these together. Then we solicited words from the students and wrote these on hearts to sort as kind or hurtful. We put our kind hearts in a prominent place for students to see and add to. Then, we very dramatically read the hurtful hearts and one by one said good bye to these, crumpled them and tossed them in the garbage. Hurtful words are garbage in our classroom and the use of kind words are a part of our classroom agreements and culture.

19. Tossing hurtful words.

20. Adding kind words written on hearts to our classroom agreements.

22. This activity has each person in the group holding a talking stick and taking turns speaking a phrase or sentence with different emotions. We modified this game to practice facts about reptiles and the emotions and voices a reader uses with different punctuation marks.

23. Procedure: 1. Solicit facts from the students about Reptiles. 2. Review the meaning of comma, period, question mark and exclamation point. Give examples of voice and expression changes. 3. Take one fact to practice with one given punctuation mark. 4. Going around the circle with a talking stick, students say the fact with the appropriate voice and expression. 5. Students split into pairs with 4 cards of different punctuation marks and a fact to take turns practicing, changing their voices and expression to match the mark given on the card. 6. Change the fact and the partners.

24. Reptiles are cold- blooded?

25. The students were given the challenge of earning coins from the teacher if they could state a fact or answer a question about reptiles randomly throughout the morning. The coins each student earned would be collected and added together to meet a given total or group goal. If the group met the goal everybody would enjoy Oreo cookies for snack.

27. Reptiles have dry, scaly skin.

28. Reptiles lay eggs,

29. This activity was based on the storybook “One” by Kathryn Otoshi. Procedure: 1. Introduce the story and ask the students to pay close attention to the colors and counting. 2. Stop and reflect with students during and at the end of the read aloud. 3. Hold up a large heart. 4. Solicit examples from the students of mean or hurtful behavior they have seen or experienced. 5. After each anecdote, crumble a bit more of the heart. 6. Using some examples given, ask what could be done to fix it. 7. Smooth out pieces of the heart as these are given. 8. Discuss how the heart cannot be completely restored after hurtful acts or words.

32. Partners share thoughts at the stopping point in the read aloud.

33. A meaningful discussion about what can fix a heart that is hurt.

35. Several of our activities were to encourage problem solving and self-monitoring of behavior. We refer to our agreements and the “crumpled or damaged heart” often during conflicts and ask children to try to solve their own problems using the tools we role-played or talked about in class. They report kind behavior to us and we write these on hearts to display. The teachers also acknowledge kind acts that we witness and give students a “shark bite”, display a heart and discuss the kindness in class.

36. Using knowledge from Speed Rabbit and Blue Jelly Beans, students can name five reptiles and write at least five facts about reptiles.

38. Many experiential education activities can be accommodated to meet academic and behavior goals, as well as building community. Vocabulary can be taught and learned in context with movement. Repetition of the activities allows for extra practice of academic language around the themes in kindergarten. In particular, English Language Learners benefit from these methods. Finally, experiential education activities are engaging. An engaged student is learning.