This week at SBL a lot took place. I took a whole class fitness lesson in both of the classrooms I was in. I decided to do the same fitness lesson for both classes. I decided on this because I wanted to see how the same lesson would go with different year levels, and I was fortunate enough to observe two shared writing lessons.
Tuesday 1 April
Today I was with new entrants. I explained the game we will be doing to the class after morning tea, this was 'Seaweed'. I gave my instructions and expectations to the class. I asked if their were any questions and I answered the questions they had. When we went outside I showed them, and walked the boundary. The game went well with the intention for everyone to remain moving throughout the fitness lesson. I demonstrated each exercise I required them to do at each end of the court. I knew they could count to 20 so I knew they understand any number of exercises I asked them to do. After the lesson I was pleased to hear they enjoyed the lesson I had prepared for them (for most kids it was their first time) and they wanted to play more. Next time I would re-emphasize the boundaries as a couple of kids continued to run past the point I showed them and almost onto the field.
Phonics:
Half of the class stay in the class and some students come from next door. The other half go next door to another class for phonics. They all sit in a circle on the mat facing the teacher with their whiteboards, pen and eraser. The teacher begins with the picture cards relating to the letter she has chosen for the day. Today the letter is M. She begins with mm mm moon, mm mm mouse, this is the sound of the letter. She gets the learners to feel the sound (hand close to the mouth mm mm). She reads them a silly story with lots of M words in it. They progress to writing an M on the M letter card on the whiteboard. The learners then practice on their whiteboards. After practicing a couple of times they get to tick their letters that look like the teachers. The teacher mixes up past phonics the students have recently been taught and incorporates todays phonic also. The kids really get involved and enjoy this behaviourism and constructivism way of learning.
Shared writing:
I was privileged to observe a shared writing lesson by a literature guru. This was amazing. The use of google docs was very successful in this prepared lesson. The WALT was to use different sentence starters. The students needed to summarise the text to their audience and readers. The social constructivism was clearly recognized in this activity with lots of peer work and group discussions, collaboration and ideas. The teacher was able to save the work and share with the group so they could continue with their individual ideas later. This made modelling ideas easier for the students to manipulate using the same tools.
Candidate Teachers and Mentor Teachers meeting at Flaxmere Primary School on behaviourism took place in the afternoon.
Wednesday 2 April
Fitness: After doing the same lesson yesterday and today I discovered how totally different my lessons went. I didn't use a whistle today as yesterday I didn't blow it so thought hmm maybe I'll try without one. I chose to do the same game also on the concrete. Next time I would take a whistle as it would be easier to get the students attention as I wasn't very familiar with everyone's names. I would also do this on the grass as they are more competitive and it would be less likely to have injuries. I also chose to have 2 students as the callers. This made the game a bit less structured as the calls were aimed at little groups of people opposed to a large majority, and the purpose was fitness and everyone remaining active. Next time I would be the caller, and what would help me now is having a better knowledge of the students names.
I observed arts and crafts today where the students followed the teachers clear instructions for choosing a shape the teacher had printed off. The piece of paper had two identical shapes. They had to cut these out perfectly. Use small strips of paper cut out the day prior, glue (with clear instructions and demonstrations from the teacher) onto their shape until the entire shape was covered. They had to cut perfectly, the extra bits of paper. The purpose of this was for the shared writing lesson I was fortunate enough to observe. I was walking home from school one day and I found an amazing egg. In the egg was a creature that had...
The WALT was using an adjective in front of a noun to make the story more interesting. There were some amazing examples in their story writing.
I had a very busy two days at SBL. I was actively trying to recognize the theories we were learning, which are Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, Te Whare Tapa Wha, Behaviourism (Skynner), Constructivism (Piaget), Social Constructivism (Vyskotsky). I noticed some of these theories in action, but I am finding it hard to recognize and understand them still.
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