Mar.26, 07

This morning, I taught a Language lesson based on what we did in Art class last week. They students made a garbage bag penguin in groups, so today I asked them to write a procedural piece on how they made the penguin. Before we began, I read them a book called “The Life of a Water Bottle”, written by my colleague, another student teacher’s Grade 6 class in Cedarwood Public School. They were impressed that 30 people worked together to create the big picture book. So I told them that each group was responsible for one of the pages, just like how our class has worked on the penguins in groups, dividing up the work within the groups. I believe that it is very important to give students positive feedbacks and encouragement when they did something good, because they need to know it. They are beginning learners who are experimenting and testing out limits all the time, and we as teachers must work together with them to ensure their learning.

Most students did really well in their writing, and I am very impressed. They seemed to enjoy it a lot and they showed me that they really did learn something!

In the afternoon, I did a Math lesson with the class. I divided them into two groups, one group wearing blue hats and the other wearing yellow hats. I made the hats before class, with a number from one to ten written on each hat. One problem that arose was that the students kept pulling on their hats, which were made out of construction papers, so some of them broke before the game started. Ms. Carson had to help them tape the hats so that I could move on.

I explained to the students that I was going to call out a number, and they had to work as a group to decide which numbers would add up to the number that I wanted. For example, if I called out 6, the students with the number 3 and 2 would stand at the middle of the carpet. The group who was faster and got the correct answer would get a point. Some issues arose when they were too excited in the game. One student was making fun of the other group because they had less points. To solve the problem, Ms. Carson helped me out and suggested that the group who yells would get a point deducted.

When I began to call out bigger numbers, I thought that they would try to get more people to stand in the middle, but they didn’t. So I would say something like, “I want 3 people to make the number 15.” Then they would start thinking how to make a sum with three numbers. Overall, the game went well, and I am pleased with how well they did!