This last Thursday, Kristie and I
implemented our Living/Nonliving Lesson at Brigham in the kindergarten
classroom. I think overall the lesson went well, but it is always good to
reflect on your teaching to make it better for next time. First of all, I wish
that we had an opportunity to be in the kindergarten classroom before we
actually gave our lesson. I felt like it was a little awkward going in there
for the first time and teaching this lesson when the students had no idea who
we were. This also would have helped us become accustomed to the classroom and
help us get to know the students’ names. We were not able to call on the
students by name, and had to point to them to have them answer. I think it was
a little strange that we went to do the get to know you games, we did it in the
preschool classroom instead of the kindergarten classroom, because I really
needed to get to know the kindergarteners more than the preschoolers. I think
if I had more opportunity to get to know the students, it would have gone
better.
Regardless, I still think the
lesson ran smoothly, given the circumstances. The students were engaged from
the start, which was definitely helpful. When we first started the lesson, they
did not know what it meant to be living or nonliving. We showed them the cookie
monster living/nonliving clip, and I think the students enjoyed it. They
laughed along with it, and afterwards were able to tell us that something needs
to breathe, eat, and grow, in order to be living. After we went over the clip,
we divided the class into five groups and took them outside. When we made our
predictions outside, I was surprised to see many of them make correct
predications. It was nice to see that they had actually learned something from
the clip, but there were still a few students who still did not know. From
this, we could tell that we needed to cover this again for those students. When
we took them inside, we had our anchor chart hanging up, and we went over what
was on that. There were several columns, item, Need air?, Need food?, Move?,
Grow?, and Living? We put the sticky note with the item and prediction under
the item column. We them went through each column to see if the item was living
or nonliving. This part seemed to confuse the students a little. The first item
we put up was a leaf, and we asked the questions in each column, which seemed
to be very hard for the students to grasp. They didn’t really have the
background knowledge that trees/leaves need air and food in order to survive.
So we had to explain to them that although it doesn’t seem like they need these
things, they actually do. After the first few examples of this, though, they
seemed to grasp it more. If I were to do this lesson over again, I would have
started with a less confusing item, like an animal. This way, it would more
concrete and easier for them to understand. Although, it was harder to explain
at first, and we had a bit of a rough start with that, I think the students
started to get it by the end of the lesson. I think the lesson really helped
the students see why it was living or nonliving, and helped them visualize it,
especially for the visual learners and English Language Learners. I think going
outside, and using the students’ responses for this portion really helped
engage the students, and give them some pride in their answers.
As I was implementing my lesson,
I worked towards attaining my goal of working with ELL students better, and
helping them learn in the best way possible for them. Since it was my first
time being in that classroom, there were a few things I noticed about it. I
noticed that everything in the classroom was both in English and in Spanish,
which I thought was awesome for those students who might need one or the other.
I wish that we had maybe translated our anchor chart into Spanish as well, to
help the students who might need that Spanish. If I were to do this lesson
over, I would definitely do this, although, I think it was fine for most of the
students. I think it was easier working towards this goal as the teacher of the
classroom because it really helped me get a feel for what it would be like to
work with these students. All of the students in my group spoke at least some
English, but there was one boy who I don’t think spoke the best English. When I
asked him to pick an object that he saw, he said “music” and when I asked him
again to pick something that he saw, he said the same thing. I don’t know if he
picked that because he didn’t really know what else to say, or if he really
just wanted to say music. I think that maybe if I had asked him in Spanish, and
expected a Spanish response from him, then maybe I would have gotten a better
response from him. In my future classroom, I plan on being very accommodating
for my ELL students. I think the experience I get from being in this bilingual
classroom this year will be very helpful, especially since I don’t have much
prior experience working with these students. I look forward to spending more
time in this classroom and gaining more experience. I also look forward to observing
the other teachers in our class implement their lessons, to see how they do and
how they accommodate these students. I think it was also helpful for these
teachers to see how we implemented our lesson, so that they could learn from
it, and plan their lessons accordingly.
Additional Living/Nonliving Resources
EXCEEDS: Included additional resources in Living/Nonliving.
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