When the kids got back from lunch, they were all curious to know who I was and why I was in the classroom. Ms. Brown gathered the class on the rug together and pulled out the class pictures that were taken the two years she was my teacher and told them how I was once one of the kids in her class, just like they are now. She told them that I am going to school to be a teacher and so I was going to be helping out in their class for a couple of months as part of my schooling.
After introductions, we had a short lesson on contractions. On her whiteboard in front of the classroom, she had written some simple phrases like "did not" and "could not" on the left, and words like "didn't" and "couldn't" on the right. She picked volunteers to come up and read the words on the left and then try to match them with words on the right. With each match, she would show how you could see the first word in its match and then showed how the "n" and the "t" were there from the "not" but the "o" had been replaced by an apostrophe-which looks like a comma floating in the sky-when the words were smashed together to make a contraction. After reviewing contractions as one big group, she sent the kids back to their tables to practice identifying which words were contractions of others on a worksheet. This was an example of cognitivism because the kids were able to use the knowledge they knew about an earlier topic (the words did, not, and could) to build into this new concept to help them learn something else. After looking at it, saying it out loud, and matching them all together, they got to practice those things at their own desks. This is also a good example of how she addressed the different individual learning preferences of her students because there was opportunity to read, write, listen, and visualize things all together. Some of the kids also mentioned a computer program where they were practicing working with the contractions which would give them further opportunities to practice using a variety of learning styles.
While the students were practicing at their desks, Ms. Brown handed me a sticky note with a list of names of students divided into pairs to practice reading some words out loud in a card game called "Poison Star." They were practicing short, long, and double "o"s in words. The students took turns drawing a card and when they read the words correctly, they could keep the card, but if they drew the poison star, they had to pass all their cards to the person next to them and the person with the most stars at the end got a prize. This was one example of how she was addressing the different developmental levels of the students in her class because the students who needed extra practice were the ones who were at the top of my list for this reading out loud practice.
After I finished up helping 6 pairs with this sight-reading game, the principal came over the loudspeaker to announce that because of the poor air quality, we would be having indoor recess. During our indoor recess, Ms. Brown sent a couple students over to me with a game to help them figure out how to play the game and I had a couple different groups of kids who cycled through during the recess.
After recess, the kids returned to the rug where they sang a song about the Water Cycle and Ms. Brown instructed them on an art project they were going to do involving the Water Cycle. I helped pass out the construction paper the students would be using before I had to head out for the day.
Overall, it was a really fun first day and I am really excited to be back in the classroom next week!
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