April.10, 07: Teaching Block Day 1

Today is the first day of my teaching block, and I'm very excited! The students applauded and cheered when Ms.Carson told them that I would be here everyday for a month. This is a good start!

I brought an egg shell for each student (and for Ms.Carson and myself) to make Eggshell People. First, I showed the class how to draw a face on the egg shell with markers. Then I made a name for my Eggshell Person. When they understood what they had to do, I handed out an egg to each student when they went back to their desks. They had a lot of fun drawing the faces! Only one student broke the eggshell, which was a surprise for me. I prepared extras just in case. When they were done, they raised their hands and me and Ms.Carson went around to put soil and grass seeds in their eggshell. I didn't want them to do that on their own because the eggshells are very fragile. But they saw us doing it in front of them, so they witnessed the process. I also showed them how to water them.

During recess, three boys came up to me -- one was crying, one looked scared, and the other was a friend of theirs. The crying boy said that he got punched in the stomach. The scared boy explained that he didn't mean to, he only wanted to hit the ball. So I asked the crying boy if he thinks it's an accident or not, and he said he doesn't know. I asked him if he thinks the other boy did it on purpose, and he said no. The third boy said that it's probably an accident. So it's resolved, and I let the crying boy go to the office. I think that it is necessary to clarify and let the boys know what have happened and what was wrong, because they need to know when if it's an accident, there is nobody to blame.

After recess, I taught the class to write their first Eggshell Journal, using their Eggshell People's perspectives. E.g., "My name is Smiley. First, Ms.Chung made my beautiful black eyes so I can see the world." I encouraged them to use adjectives and write descriptive sentences. E.g., What are those black eyes for? To see the classroom, the sky, the birds, etc. Most of them got it! I gave lots of individual help to Josh, and it helped a lot just to be beside him.

In Math class, I told students stories about the Canadian coins, and they were very engaged. I found that they knew more than I thought about money, which is good.
I taught them how to do sketches with the coins to make a booklet, with sentences saying how much each coin worths. They had fun with the coin rubbings, and I think today is a very good start for my teaching block!