Maybe the title's a bit harsh, but I'm riding the emotional rollercoaster that goes along with being a teacher and I've just come off a mountain top and I'm in a valley at the moment. I finished the week last week playing a ppt game that all the kids loved. I forgot to take my textbooks and teachers guides home for the weekend and I started the week off ill-prepared. I knew the basic ideas, but when teaching 5th Grade Science, the textbook is actually quite in depth (American 5th Grade Textbook). My cursory Science knowledge is somewhat lacking or exposed when one of my brainy students asks me a question, or asks me to clarify, when I haven't read all the fine print.
My topic this week was Animal Classification. I spent a great deal of time making game questions for the "Sit down if you can't ______" game. I gave each of the students a piece of paper with a command on it. I told them don't show anyone your paper. I will then ask you to read it to the whole class and they must obey what you say. "Sit down if you can't snap your fingers" etc. I was really excited about the game, and I was more excited when the kids actually understood why we played the game. However, I spent too much time on the game and trying to get the meaning of it through to the kids, that I pretty much wasted one class. Now I have a lot of information to cover, and only one class to do it in, and all the kids will be hanging out to play the ppt game again.
I've created a nice little mess for myself - WAAH!!!!! All this week I've been chasing my tail. It would be nice to actually have all my lessons for the week sorted by the weekend or Monday at the latest.
The impossible was made possible today - Thank God :) I was able to cover a huge amount of material in only 40 mins. I drew a big chart on the board identifying the different items I was teaching about and did a large comparison over 5 or 6 attributes. The students had to scan their books for the answers and there was a lot of interaction in the class. Albeit mostly closed questions but I do pun a lot in the lesson, and there was some amusing interactions with the students. Hopefully my humor will help them to remember the answers by creating mental pictures or catch phrases. I taught today about fungi and bacteria, and how there is fungus in bread (yeast) and bacteria in yogurt (Yakult). I told them to go home today and tell their moms how they were really hungry and thirsty and they wanted to eat fungus and drink bacteria.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I'm just really happy that I got this lesson finished as there was a lot to be done - YAY!!!!
Glad you're happy with the progreess. I'm glad there was a lot of interaction. I hope you noticed what KIND of interaction. Was it useful beyond elevating the atmosphere? Complete sentences? Genuine communication of new ideas? Asking good questions? Your modelling? Etc? These are the details we should be able to discuss in the reflections.
ReplyDeleteI can say for the most part that due to the amount of information required by the higher level classes, a lot of the interaction was closed questions. The students were eager to earn points for their teams and they were offering additional information in sentence form to gain points.
ReplyDeleteI was especially happy with my lowest level class today. We were talking about viruses and they all were so eager to interact, and add to what their friends were saying. They stayed behind after the bell to ask more questions. I commended them on being so interactive. It was awesome!
I wish I had enough students in my classes for points to be that effective. That's one of the things that I miss from public schools. I'm glad that you were able to cover lost ground. Gross subjects are usually the most fun!
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