April.16, 07: Teaching Block Day 5

The seeds that we put into our Eggshell People grew over the weekend! Now all the Eggshell People have hair! The students were so excited about it!

I taught the class about plant parts today. I thought that it would be fun to add some music and movements in the lesson, so I went on the Internet and found a movement song about plant parts. Last term, I took a course called Music Pedagogy, and it is very helpful to me as a teacher. The professor taught us how to incorporate music into our everyday classroom, and how to teach them songs by rote. It was a fun course, and I really learned a lot from it. I feel happy that I can apply it in my teaching and it actually worked well. I think the students had fun, and the movements helped them remember the locations of various plant parts.

The class was pretty chatty today. Most of them were talking about what they were doing, so I didn't really intervene much. However, I think that I should tell them beforehand that if they are done, they'll work on their unfinished work. It created some confusion for me and my students because I wasn't clear, and I had to look through the pile of work to find the students' work for them. If I can do this lesson again, I'll organize all of their unfinished work first, so they can easily access them and minimize the wasting of time.

In the afternoon, I started our Math lesson with selling and buying things. Counting up the money to "pay" me is a very strong incentive for students to want to learn. A lot of the times, they weren't really interested in what items they are buying, as long as they can buy something. I will start each Math lesson with this buying exercise so they can have more practice and more fun at the same time. I also let them know that I only pick people who are quiet, who sit properly and who listen. This is working well so far.

I taught the students how to use different coin combinations to make the same amount of money. I also introduced the class to the relationship of pennies, nickels and dimes. I showed them examples and made sure that most of them understand before letting them explore with the coin manipulatives. I think that money is a very abstract concept for kids, because they don't use them on a regular basis. I let them explore and gave them guidance when they needed them. Today, again, was tiring, but enjoyable!