Well to start I have had full control of the class this week so it has been a little scary but so far it has been great I have had to take some time to get use to the older students who are definitely very different than the kindergarten kiddos that I have worked with since August. The older students are challenging always keeping me on my toes making me think all day!
Monday we started off our poetry unit in which I will be teaching the students 10 types of poems and they will create several in a draft book then put them into a colorful book with illustrations. I played a youtube video of what poetry is with some great music that they really enjoyed. Then I asked them why they think poetry might be boring which a lot of them said it was I told them poetry isn't always like that and that i would show them that they all could do it. We also played a little bit of Run DMC's It's Tricky to show rap has poetry in it which they loved and they have been singing it all the time. I also introduced the beginning of our communication unit which will end with the students presenting a photo story with a partner on an electronic equipment that has helped communication. They use an inquiry based approach which starts with a knowledge attack done by the teacher where they learn information on the topic then using a big question they go from there to work on their own learning.
Tuesday we did a really great lesson on the election process. I was surprised on how much they knew about the candidates and how excited they were to learn about everything America. We watched the book Grace for President on youtube and they at first laughed at some of the funny voices given to the characters but at the end everyone was cheering for Grace. The book really gave a great description on how to run for president and the process of voting and what each state contributes. My cooperating teacher even said he learned a lot including myself it was a good political review for me and got me in the patriotic mood even though we are far away. They then got a chance to vote between two books each student being a state and then getting the correct electoral votes to say which our favorite book is in the class. They loved it and we also looked at scholastic to see who the kids voted for in the kid election. We also voted in our class and Barack Obama might like that it was a big win in our class 29 to 1 for Mitt Romney haha! We also started with our first poem form which was Haiku's. For something different I decided to take them outside to be one with nature when writing this form which is all about the outdoors they loved it and came up with some really beautiful stuff.
Wednesday the kids were anxiously waiting to see the results of the election but were not out until the next day so we just got to watch live updates from nbc. For our communication we learned about the first types of communication with the cave paintings. So we played pictionary with the teams the students work with in the classroom. They are split into five groups each a sports team in New Zealand all day the students are working to be the top team by getting and losing points during the day from me so they were very excited to play and try to win points. They had so much fun trying to communicate without talking but only drawing pictures.
Thursday they were all very excited about the election results so we watched a clip of President Obama's victory speech they thought he did a very good job and that there were a lot of people there most of them said they would have been nervous. They were very interested in some of the presidents so we had a little bit of a political conversation again and I talked about how I was student council president with one of my best friends (Shout out Zoe "We are going to paint the town!") and how we ran together to get elected. Who knew this would be such a hot topic but the wanted to know everything I did and how I changed the school Mr. Adams would be very proud. We continued with our poetry where we learned about acrostic poems and I did one with them about my dog Libby. They helped me make it about here asking what she is like I think we described her quite well.
Lovable
Intelligent
Barky
Brave
Yappy
We also got to do a little more investigating into communication with morse code. I even got to learn a lot about this when planning so I was very excited to teach. They were so thrilled when I introduced it. We watched some youtube videos including the alphabet and messages. I gave each student a copy of the alphabet and then they wrote their name in morse code along with a secret messages that they had to give to someone to crack. They had so much fun doing this they even made some messages about me nice ones of course!
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| Click on the picture for a better look! |
Friday was a very exciting day at Swanson Primary we had our whole school (2nd grade to 7th grade) athletic day. My cooperating teacher is in charge of athletics so he was very busy getting ready for everything with a little help from our class. The students have been training for athletics for many weeks prior so this was a very big day to show what they could do. There was sprints, long distance, tug of war, shot put, discus, high jump, and long jump. At the school each student is put into a house either red, yellow, blue or green very similar to the Harry Potter movie which made me feel like I am student teaching at Hogwarts. I was in charge of sprints and relays with two other teachers one that is in our grade level and the other is from South Carolina. My job was to place the students 1-4 so then they could get points for their house. They made an 8 lane track on the infield with spray paint it was a big job but a fun and beautiful day was had by all. I was in the blue house and it can right down to the wire with points with us and red but in the end we lost coming down to the last relay race but it was awesome to see how much the kids love sports and cheering on their teammates the young and old students alike.
Below is a video of a race. It was a final so everyone was cheering on their house color to win. Look at how excited blue is! Woohooo
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| Blue Team! Woohoo |
Coming soon our trip to Bethels Beach, Adventure time in Devonport, and the Auckland Zoo!!
I can't believe it is already the third week time has been flying by.
More to come Cheers.
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