In Class Small Group Presentation Reflections

Recently we did an activity in class that required us to come up with lessons to teach the rest of the class in a short time period. I thought this was one of the more effective class periods for us because we as students were all actively engaged and interested in what we were doing. It taught us about putting a presentation, or a lesson, together in a short time frame with limited materials, which is very important for us as teachers because we constantly run into situations like this where we need to be flexible and resourceful with the time and supplies given-no matter how little that is. This activity was beneficial because it proved that even lessons put in place at the last minute can still be meaningful and also engaging to the students-as well as showing the importance of centering your lessons on meaningful, engaging and inquiry-based information so as to captivate your learners and draw interest to the material being presented. I liked participating in other groups activities, as well as developing my own activity in relation to the article we were supposed to focus on for class. Because I had already read both articles, I knew a lot of the background information so the activities were quite simple to catch on to, but even for those who were encountering the information for the first time, these lessons would have been effective. I think you had us do this activity to help us realize how important it is to incorporate the 5 E’s into our lessons as they really do boost students learning. It also showed the importance of presenting only the main ideas when time is limited, and that we could create effective and meaningful presentations in short time periods, as well as showing us the importance of focusing your material to student needs- we were able to understand these presentations because we had read the articles prior to class so we knew what was going on-but sometimes, students will come to class with no prior knowledge, and we must be able to teach to their learning as well.

This week we read a story about plants in class. The kids learned about how plants start out as a seed then grow into a flowering plant. They then created "how a plant grows" charts which they individually wrote and illustrated-they had a lot of fun! This was the introduction to the plants unit that the kids will be learning about for the remainder of the year in science, which was originally introduced wholly by Ashley, Emily and I with the Five Senses and Living vs. Non-living lessons. The kids seem to understand and enjoy the plants unit so far a great deal and will enjoy the hand on and outdoor activities that will follow for the remainder of the semester.

This week I led my social studies lesson and the kids did projects for Easter and had their reading centered around St. Patrick's Day, so I didn't see much science in the classroom. However, on Monday the class finished up their Dinosaur lesson with putting the finishing touches on their dinosaur stories, so that bit relates to science to an extent. The kids loved their "dinosaur week" and had creative imaginations in creating their dinosaurs and dinosaur stories. I found this themed-week to be more centered on creativity than science. Science could have been better incorporated into some lessons this week by focusing a tad more on the history of actual dinosaurs rather than "cartoon stories" and creativity. Of course, these aspects are okay as well, but I felt that my CT should have also taught some factual information about dinosaurs. The kids would have loved this just as much as the non-fiction, they are fascinated by "real life" things that are unknown to them, and it would have been more meaningful and have taught the kids a lot more of science as well.

This week was “Dinosaur Week” in my field placement, which was very exciting and a lot of fun for the first graders! We read stories about specific dinosaurs and how they lived, wrote our own “If the dinosaurs came back…” stories, and made life-size dinosaurs of our very own! This was a great theme for the children because it was something they could all take part in and get creative with, and something they all had heard of and really loved learning about. During a discussion, my CT mentioned that the kids could create their dinosaurs however they want, and be as creative, silly or thoughtful as they wanted in doing so because we don’t really know exactly what the dinosaurs were like since they are all gone and have been gone so long before humans ever existed, so there were “no wrong answers” for this activity. One of my students related this and said “yeah, that’s cause the dinosaurs are all extinct”, which is an uncommon word for six and seven year old children to use. My CT asked the rest of the class if they knew what this word meant, and none of the 27 other children could explain, so she let the boy who first brought it up explain-for which he accurately stated “that means that they are all gone and not coming back cause there are no more left in the whole wide world”-very good description coming from a first grader!

Today I led my whole class lesson relating to the five senses. It was a lot of fun and it went very well! The kids seemed to enjoy it a lot and I got great positive feedback from my CT, so overall I would say it was a success. It went much more smoothly than I expected, though the kids were very talkative and energetic which resulted in a very loud classroom!
I began the lesson by asking my students if they knew anything about the five senses, which they didn't even after I told them that one was seeing. We discussed what they were, and I read aloud from the "big book" that went along with this lesson. The big book was interactive and allowed the kids to answer questions pertaining to the lesson. After the discussion, I read the book "My Five Senses" by Alkali, which explained clearly the five senses. After this, the kids were able to all tell me the five senses, the body parts correlating to them, and their uses, as well as how they help us observe things and figure out things in the world around us. One student contributed "when I brush my teeth, I am touching, smelling, tasting and seeing. And I can hear the brushing too", which I thought was a very good connection and real world application to the lesson!
After the discussion and story, we experimented with different instrument sounds, for which the kids hypothesized the sounds that would be produced. This was a quick and simple activity. Next, the kids all went back to their tables (4 kids at 7 different circular tables) and we did the "What's in the bag?" activity, where the kids had a numbered brown bag with something inside. They couldn't look inside the bag, but could use their senses of touch, smell, and hearing (by shaking the bag) to guess the contents and write what they thought was inside the bag next to the corresponding number on a sheet of paper. After every child at the table observed the bag, we would switch bags. There were 8 bags in all containing the following items: sugar, rice, pennies, popcorn, jelly beans, strawberries, marshmallows and raisins. The class did very well with this activity and followed directions quite well, I was impressed. Hardly any students peeked inside the bags, which I know is hard for kids.
After each child had observed every bag and written down their guesses, we met back at the carpet area to share ideas-kids came up with great ideas. Some "incorrect" ideas were: kitty litter, sprinkles, grain, and seeds for the rice; sand, dirt and flour for the sugar; and marbles, rocks, big M&M's, and nuts for the jelly beans. I loved hearing their ideas, a lot of them were quite relevant or possible and many kids did correctly guess the contents-they did very well and could tell me the senses they used and characteristics that determined their guesses. I brought extra marshmallows and jelly beans for the kids to enjoy at the end of the activity, which they of course loved!

This post is late arriving due to our spring break, but 2 weeks ago in my feild placement I led a science talk related to the five senses with five students in my first grade classroom. The discussion was led by me at the kidney table, and the kids seemed comfortable sharing their ideas-overall I felt it went very well.

In leading this science talk relating to the five senses, I realized before I even began that the students were unfamiliar with the word “senses” or understanding the concept of “the five senses” when I first selected a group of students for the talk and explained that we were going to do a quick talk about our five senses, and was received with a crowd of blank stares and questions such as “what’s that?”. I immediately adapted my plan by deciding to begin with a brief and basic intro by saying “our senses are what we use to observe and find out about things around us. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting are together the five senses”, and decided that since they weren’t familiar with the term “senses” to change my question a bit.

I asked the students “What are some ways you would use tasting, touching, your eyes, ears and nose to describe something?” I also added that they could use one or a few of these things to describe something, and that using all at once was not necessary, but also okay to do. At first, the responses were very basic, such as “I smell flowers” and “I taste food” and sometimes off track, like when one child said “I eat” or misunderstood when a child said “I use my mouth to sing” (for which, I scaffolded this to we use our mouth to taste, but we can also use our mouth to make sounds which we hear with our ears…” which then prompted better discussion. The responses also became more in depth. One child said “I hear sounds” and that led to things such as “I hear music, and I can make music” (for which I asked what would we do to make music, which led eventually to the sense of touching) and other responses like “I taste and smell and touch food” and another child adding “and I look at food and I can sometimes hear it like I can hear popcorn when its cooking”. The students were very talkative and engaged and ultimately came up with some great ideas, like “I can see clapping when I clap and I can hear it and feel it too”. I thought that, once adapted and with some prodding and some scaffolding, the discussion was successful.