My last two articles have discussed how teachers need to push students above and beyond. Teachers need to be conscious of the needs of the students in the classroom who are above average.
It is my opinion that students can learn much from just being exposed to various skills and information. We all know that exposure and life experiences greatly affect a child’s learning and performance.
My exposure phase is not a separate section of my day. The exposure to new information is given through my everyday teaching. I simply add extra information that is not required.
During reading, I expose my students to words that I know many of them cannot read. They are words that perhaps the students have not seen before. They are words that the students cannot sound out phonemically due to either word structure or the lack of knowledge of the sounds.
In many cases, teachers do not present new, harder words to the students. The books consist of words that the class has studied and words that the children can sound out.
By exposing the children to unfamiliar words they learn how to skills to discover new words. After seeing the words a few times, they remember them.
When teaching the coins, I am required to teach students to identify the coin and give the value. However, I also add the name of the President on the front of the coin.
Each morning we count the number of days that we have been in school. Once the number is above one hundred, I begin adding how to properly read the number. I tell the students that we only say the word “and” if we see a decimal in the number. Kindergarten students are not required or ready to understand the concept of a decimal. However, many of my students can now tell you that you say the word “and’ when you see a decimal and that a decimal is like a period that is in numbers.