Go with the flow lesson plan

While teaching my spelling lesson plan to one of my students, it made me realize that just because you prepare step by step procedures they are not set in stone. I was prepared. The child joined me at a table. The step by step procedures immediately went out the window. The student saw the pictures and words I had piled up for a sh and ch digraph word sort and immediately grabbed them and began her sort! I prompted her to say the words and what the picture was of while she sorted, but she took matter into her own hand. I let her guide the lesson! She was doing everything correctly and made no mistakes so I feel this allowed me to " go with the flow." This proves that no matter how much planning is prepared for any lesson or activity, it is highly likely that there will be modifications made by you, the teacher, or the student them self.

Time Managment

I would like to share one of my experiences from this past Friday (the day before Halloween). The teacher I work with was out on this day and I was alone (without a sub). For those of you who are used to traditional classroom, this would seem to not be an issue, but in a Montessori classroom there is a constant flow of children asking questions (more explanation will have to wait for another blog entry!). Since it was the Friday before Halloween, I had a fun day planned with word searches, word scrambles, color by number, crossword puzzles, pumpkin activities, and, finally, a activity involving corn starch and water. Those of you who are in Math and Science know exactly what I am talking about. At the end of the day, after building this super fun activity up all day, I had everything all set up. I stated the rules, grouped the kids, poured a pile of corn starch on the table, and lastly gradually added water to the pile of corn starch. Wow! The kids loved it! I knew this would be messy, but had no idea it would be THIS MESSY! What proved to be the main challenge was my time management for this activity. I allowed the last 40 minutes of the day for this. After allowing them to play and get their hands dirty (literally) it was near impossible to get them to clean up because they were having so much fun. After providing each table with a trashcan and paper towels, I realized that I needed to implement another form of motivation if we were going to get cleaned up and packed up before the bus pulled out of the parking lot. Luckily one of my parent sent in some organic cookies for Halloween. I told the table who cleaned their table and area first would be the first to receive a cookie. Thank goodness for the cookies! I know it was wrong to offer this type of motivation to the children, but if I had not, the kids would have run out of the room white, covered in starch and leaving me with an hours worth of cleaning. Point being, sometimes when you think you have enough time to complete an activity, you don't. Always give yourself extra time. Also, always have a backup activity or plan in case a lesson or activity is completed early.

Teaching a Reading Lesson

I am using the classroom that I work in for my observations. Today I taught a reading lesson to my five first graders and I want to reflect on some of my strengths and weakness that I noticed. A strength that I noticed was how great the brainstorming idea that involved the students discussing things that make them feel happy and sad. The kids were very willing to share and came up with some really great ideas and examples of why someone would feel happy or sad. I believe it really put them in the proper mindset because the book discussed why children were having a bad day and what made them feel better. A second strength I noted was illustrated by the student’s interest in the book itself. They liked the topic and really fought over who got to read first and who got to read for a second time. They illustrated cooperation in the small group and were willing to help the classmates who struggled with reading words.
A weakness I saw is somewhat linked to my second strength. Not all students were able to read more than one page each, which caused some disagreement. I actually allowed the entire group to read the last page simultaneously. They all wanted to read more. Next time I would choose a longer book and a book that is at a higher reading level. Hugs was a bit too easy for all the students involved in this particular lesson. Another weakness I noticed was that while I was teaching my lesson I wish I had placed more emphasis on the cause and the effect. I would have liked to go deeper into explanation of causal relationships and I would have liked to use real life examples, not just examples from the book we had just read. I will certainly take all of these considerations in effect when using this lesson plan in the future.