April.20, 07: Teaching Block Day 9

We did a Science Centre Trip writing today. I made a brainstorming web with the headings "Going There", "My Favourite Part", "My Least Favourite Part", "What I Learned" and "Coming Back". This would help the students with organizing their writing, because there were so much that happened during the trip, they might not rememeber everything that they want to say, or they might not know where to begin. This would give them guidance as to how to approach the writing. I listened to them sharing their experience, and I felt good when I knew what they were trying to describe to me. For example, when a student was describing the cave, I said, "Oh yeah, and there were bigger kids who were trying to scare us!" And then he said, "Yeah, I scared people too! I scared YOU when you came in!" We shared, discussed and laughed, and I really enjoyed it.

In the afternoon, I signed out the computer and let them play an online money counting game. They spent a long time typing the addresses last time we used the computers, so I printed a large picture of a keyboard and coloured in the keys ".", "/", "~" and "#" so I could point to them when they type. I also pointed to the letters so they could find them more quickly. They really liked the game, but some of them got bored after a while. So I typed in another address for them and they played another game. Using the computers with the Grade Ones is very time consuming, but I think that as they get used to it and use it more often, they'd do it more quickly and easily.