Reflections

In preparing for and then teaching our lessons, I have learned so much about ancient Egypt and I now understand just how well versed teachers need to be to teach the subjects at hand. I am assuming that my first couple of years of teaching will require a lot of reading up on different subjects. I guess the years that follow will require some researching as well to be up to date on information that children will need (and want!) to know.

I believe that our biggest downfall in our unit was the lack of proper assessment throughout the week and at the end of the unit. While discussions were plentiful we should have created some sort of rubric or checklist to be able to note who is saying what in discussions and who is demonstrating what kind of knowledge or understanding. We ended the unit feeling like it was pretty successful but looking back on it, we have little documentation to prove that the students actually learned something. Assessment for younger grades especially is something that I want to continue to explore. It is a challenge for me to think outside of the traditional assessment box and realize that assessment can take varied forms.

Lesson #5

For our last lesson of our unit, Catherine R. and I wanted the students to really experience what daily life was like in ancient Egypt. We wanted the students to sense the class divisions and to see all of the different types of people that comprised ancient Egyptian society. We felt the best way to do this was not to read a book to the students or have then watch a movie but reenact it themselves. Our second graders love role-playing because they have a chance to get up out of their chairs and express themselves. A little bit of undercover learning! We found a great book called Voices of Ancient Egypt that described the lives of about 10-12 different types of Egyptians. This book was the inspiration for a lot of our “casting.”

We first walked into the classroom and sat down all of our props in the back of the room. In the fifteen minutes we had before teaching, we went to the teachers’ bathroom and transformed ourselves into ancient Egyptian women. We had made neck bands of jewels and paint and long robes with a sash tied around the middle. We had eye makeup to resemble Egyptian women and a lot of big jewelry around our necks and wrists. Catherine R. even had made a wig out of yarn to indicate her high-class status. We walked into the class and the kids exclaimed with excitement. Even Mr. F. was laughing in the back of the classroom saying, “What are you two up to now?” I loved seeing Mr. F. so excited about what we were doing.

The kids listened very attentively as we told them about our lives in ancient Egypt. Again, I loved being able to bring the subject to life for them. I wish that Catherine R. and I had been more versed in the details of our lives. The students loved hearing about my “children” and how I only give them wooden toys to play with. Besides bothering us with “No, you’re really Ms. Brown!” they asked us questions about our jobs, our homes, and how we felt about being women. Catherine R. and I had hoped that this personal interaction would help the students remember the information a little more than if they had just read about Egyptian daily life in a textbook.

Catherine R. and I were flattered to watch Mr. F. go through the hallway and get all of the teachers to come and see what his “UVA students” were up to. With all of the anxiety we had felt in planning our unit, it seemed to be worth Mr. F.’s approval. He is a veteran teacher of 20 or so years and Catherine R. were glad to know that he approved of our innovative lesson plans.

The role-playing activity went exactly as planned. We took time to explain each role and then had a time of questioning each character. What do you like to do for fun? Are you happy about being in the desert all day? Most of the students really got into their characters as we reminded them about their acting skills and using their imaginations (Mr. F. acts in local performances so he loved this too). We then allowed about 3 minutes for the students to interact with each other while Catherine R. and I walked around and prompted some discussion of different character roles. We observed the noblemen and women demanding the clothes-washers to wash and fold their clothes in the Nile. The Pharaoh ruled from his throne and ordered the slaves to build his pyramids. The second graders successfully created a scene of ancient Egyptian life.

I realized during this activity that I don’t think the second graders are reading independently about ancient Egypt. I wish their book bins were filled with books on ancient Egypt and they had a selection to choose from during the week. This would have enhanced our lessons and their entire study of ancient Egypt.

Lesson #4

Our mummies lesson was probably our most fun lesson so far for the students. The students loved watching me get wrapped up and mummified by Catherine R. They sat around on the floor and on chairs and watched me up on the “work table” as Catherine R. went through the entire detailed process of mummification. She even had individual jars for all of my organs! We took Mr. F.’s advice and went with grossing the students out as best we could. He knows his students and knows how they love gross things. He was right. Every student was on the edge of his/her seat screaming “Eww!” and waiting to hear what was next for the mummy. I loved being able to bring this ancient tradition to life right before the children’s eyes and I enjoyed seeing them get excited about something that they may not have been excited about if they had read it in a text book.

The night before our lesson, I was worried that describing the mummification process in such detail was a little pointless. It was not included in the SOLs and seemed like trivial information that they could read about in independent reading if they chose. However, I was surprised to witness the conversation that took place surrounding my mummification. Some of the more motivated students (I call a lot of them the “professors’ kids”) chimed in during Catherine R.’s description of the process with questions about who I was that allowed me to get buried in a pyramid and what kinds of things did I want to get buried with me. This led into a discussion about the wealthy getting buried with fine jewels and other objects they would want to take with them to the afterlife. This really seemed to intrigue a lot of the students and I was glad that this enactment of an old Egyptian practice spurred so much interest in the ancient society.

One thing that I want to continue working on is behavioral management. It is hard to get a class fired up about something and then calm them back down immediately in order to pay attention to the information you are presenting to them. I want to learn how to engage students and get them excited about what they are learning but at the same time keep them focused. We had students exclaim “Ewww!” and then turn to their neighbors and keep going on about how gross something was when Catherine R. and I were on to another topic for discussion.

It is amazing to me how what I would consider being insignificant facts could stick with a child’s memory. They loved little facts that Catherine R. would include like cats being considered sacred animals by the ancient Egyptians and good luck charms being placed within a mummy’s bandages.

Our form of assessment for today’s lesson included having the students put together a flipbook for the steps of the process of mummification. I was encouraged to see the students putting them together themselves and then helping others around them if they needed help. I listened to Mr. F. tell the students to ask each other for help before coming to him. I really liked this sense of community within the classroom and I hope to develop these attitudes and values in mine as well.

While the flipbook was a substantial artifact that we could take away and grade for each student’s understanding of the day’s material, it was hard to tell if the student had really grasped the material or they had just copied a neighbor’s work. Catherine R. and I discussed how perhaps we should have had a checklist and when a student was finished with the first ordering of the flipbook, he/she could have come to one of us and we could have made a quick note of their progress. Did they have it right the first time? Did they have all but two pages in order? This would have been a more accurate picture of how much they took in about the steps of mummification.

Lesson #3

In planning our lesson, we knew that we wanted to include a lesson with stations where smaller groups of students could learn different information about life in ancient Egypt. This would give us a good sense of how transitions work between stations. I certainly learned in this lesson how important it is to have everything prepared ahead of time in order to make transitions go smoothly. And once again, I have a lot to learn if I were to do stations with myself as the only teacher! Obviously, stations in general need to be introduced one at a time if they involve individual work without the teacher’s presence and guidance. Students need to demonstrate an ability to work independently before they can be entrusted to work away from the teacher. After this day’s lesson, I can imagine that this takes time and a lot of instruction!

I have realized with this lesson that even though a lot of preparation is entailed, stations are indeed an effective way to communicate a lot of information in one lesson. Stations give students the opportunity to investigate multiple aspects of a particular subject. In this case, students investigated the various inventions that came out of ancient Egypt. One station included a water clock demonstration, one involved going through the process of making construction paper papyrus, and one was a hieroglyphics riddle station. Once again, it was a luxury to be able to have three teachers involved! Mr. F. got students started on their individual hieroglyphics worksheets, I had a short presentation on water clocks, and Catherine R. talked with a small group about papyrus. Students were able to receive more individual attention and were able to participate more openly in discussions. I noticed students who don’t usually share in class piping up in conversation about the important of clocks in our lives. Having a smaller group also made it easier to go around in a circle and all share our answers and responses.

Again, with explicit instructions, and Mr. F.’s reinforcement, the students were able to successfully transition from station to station. We found turning out the lights to be especially efficient with these students as this is something they are very used to Mr. F. doing.

In reflecting back on this lesson, I am realizing just how much information we tried to cram into one lesson. I think we felt pressured to teach the students every aspect of ancient Egypt that we could. We felt like their knowledge of ancient Egypt was in our hands and that we had to cover everything we could in five lessons. I believe that instead we should have realized that content like ancient Egypt should be reinforced throughout the day and throughout the weeks to come. It is very likely that if we were actually teaching this class, we would have reinforced what they were learning about ancient Egypt through literature and on into the next unit on ancient China as well. We should have therefore narrowed our focus and our objectives a little more in planning our entire unit and especially this particular lesson. This is something I want to work on as a beginner teacher, realizing that while there is important content that I have to cover, sometimes less is more with teaching.

Lastly, I am disappointed to say that with all of the information we presented to the students on this day, it is hard to say whether or not they actually learned much from it. While Catherine R. and I did both comment on the fruitfulness of discussions within our small groups, we did not save enough time for any sort of assessment at the end and we did not create any sort of checklist to be able to account for each child actually learning the material. Perhaps we could have created a “Before you pass ‘Go’” card for each station where students would have to fill out a piece of information like an exit card in order to move on to the next station. This would have demonstrated to us what they students did and did not know after each station.

Lesson #2

Catherine R. would probably agree with me that the only reason we chose to do concept attainment with our second lesson was to fulfill the models requirement for our unit. It has been hard to convince us that second graders can benefit from these intricate lesson models. I think this is because our most successful lessons last semester did not necessarily belong to a particular type or model. Nevertheless, we structured our second lesson on pyramids around a concept attainment lesson because it seemed to fit the best. We wanted the students to learn about the characteristics of pyramids so we could easily come up with example of what a pyramid was not like as well. Introducing the lesson by telling the students that we had a “game” to play with them where they were going to have to guess a mystery topic was a great idea. These kids certainly get motivated with games and competition.

I have to admit that this lesson went so much more smoothly than I had anticipated. The concept attainment lesson went exactly as planned. The students hypothesized topics according to our estimations. Some were too specific, which spurred great conversation. Other topics were too broad which also led to great discussions. A student even guessed “pyramids” right at the end like we had hoped! We were able to discuss what mummies were and why they were associated with pyramids. We were able to talk about why flashlights weren’t involved with pyramids and why ramps were. Concept attainment was a great way to present information to students without just standing there and talking. The clues and non-clues prompted much discussion which Catherine R. and I could chime in to with information about pyramids. Students were engaged with us and with each other and I noticed how this is a neat aspect to a classroom that I want to foster. I would hate for me to be the bearer of all knowledge. Children can learn so much even from each other and I want to foster that kind of classroom environment.

One of the funniest parts of this lesson was when one of the students challenged Catherine R.’s and my presentation of information. This particular student is the son of two professors and receives much instruction at home. Apparently he is reading up on ancient Egypt at home because he claimed that our non-clue of a pillow was actually a clue because sometimes mummies were propped up with their favorite pillows. I actually figured that this boy might know more than us but I didn’t want to be wrong in front of the class! Catherine R. and I froze and didn’t know what to do next. We ended up telling this boy that he is probably right but we should just move on with the next topic. Looking back on this, I think we should have addressed his inquiry a bit further. We could have told him to look it up at home and bring back some information to share with the class. We also could have looked it up ourselves and reported back to the next day instead of just dropping it. Either way, I realized that there will be times when my students (even second graders!) will know the answer when I don’t. I need to realize that I do not know all of the answers to everything and that is okay. I just need to be eager to find the answers.

One of the things I most enjoyed during this lesson was seeing the students’ excited faces when I showed them architecture books of modern day houses in the shape of pyramids. Our feeble attempt to demonstrate the ancient Egyptians’ contribution to modern architecture, the few pictures that I showed them wowed the students and I think impressed upon them the intellect and the creativity of the ancient Egyptians.

Having the students’ create their own pyramids at the end was a creative form of assessment that the students didn’t even realize was an assessment. We asked them to draw items on the inside of their paper pyramids that would have been found inside of a pyramid in ancient Egypt. We encouraged them to draw hieroglyphics, hidden tunnels and mummies with their jewels. This is a great way to evaluate whether or not each student has internalized the characteristics of pyramids.

To end our lesson, Mr. F. encouraged us to practice turning out the lights and waiting for the students to stop what they are doing to listen to further instructions. This is a great way of making sure that all students have an equal opportunity to hear the same instructions and respond (hopefully) accordingly.

Lesson #1

On this first day of our unit, Catherine R. and I walked in the door and upon seeing our extra bags of materials, the children immediately expected something fun and exciting from us. There were lots of smiling faces and students yelling, “Yes! Miss Brown and Miss Robinson are back!” I even had one student ask if we were going to make that gooey stuff from another planet again (Oobleck). I am wondering just how I will be able to keep my future students this interested in my lessons. These lessons that we have been preparing in Curry have been new and exciting to these kids and I realize that it is unrealistic to think that I could possibly come up with an exhilarating lesson for every subject of every day in the real teaching world. Literacy, for instance, will require some routine that the students will probably not scream about excitedly every day. I know the challenge will be to motivate the students with purposeful activities throughout their routine course of study that will engage them in the material in different ways.

We knew we wanted to open up the first day’s lesson with a read aloud of a fiction book that would introduce important terms about ancient Egypt (Nile, pyramids, etc.) We hoped that this would incite some interest within the students and at the same time leave them with some key terms to prepare for the unit. We realized how difficult it is to find a particular book for a particular unit of study right when you need it! Luckily the second grade teacher next door had bins and bins of books on ancient Egypt and we were able to find several to choose from. We chose Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile because of its simple story and its inclusion of key terms on ancient Egypt. We felt comfortable with the author being Tomie dePaola so we assumed that Mr. F. would be okay with our choice. Indeed he was; he nodded his head enthusiastically when we sat down to do our read aloud.

However, as we were pressed for time at the end of our lesson, we realized how our read aloud could have been omitted entirely, or at least saved until we knew we had time at the end. We have learned in Language Block how there should be at least 15 minutes a day scheduled for reading aloud to the class for fluency support. A fictional story to support the day’s content study would be perfect for a read aloud at the end of the day, clearing space for more content study.
As I did the read aloud and Catherine R. followed by doing the map exercises with the students, I realized just how helpful it is to have multiple teachers in the classroom. I am going to be in for a rude awakening when I have to teach all of the subjects!

With this lesson, we took Mr. F.’s advice once again to try out different ideas we have learned in Curry. In preparing for the unit, Catherine R. and I knew that we wanted to do a cooperative learning activity with the students to see how well second graders can do with particular jobs in group work. This lesson focused on having the students work in groups to take notes on a photograph of Egypt. Some of the objectives were to have the students investigate the geography of Egypt as well as characteristics of pyramids. I think one of the huge successes of this lesson was the explicit list of instructions we gave at the beginning. We handed out a colored piece of paper to each student, a simple way for students to remember which job they were going to hold. We laid out exactly what each job was supposed to do during the assignment. We had learned last semester how it is particularly efficient to be as explicit as possible in giving instructions to these students.

While the students were successful in fulfilling their job titles, we realized how it might have worked better for us to go through each stage of the Observation Sheet with the class to help pace the assignment. While we did do this to an extent, it would have been more helpful if we had described each category with more detail and then allowed time for the students to complete one section at a time. Second graders (especially these second graders) need as much guidance and scaffolding as possible.

I was extremely impressed with how well the students responded to this lesson, namely the responses we saw on the Observation Sheets. Students were realizing on their own that some of Egypt is full of vegetation (and therefore probably close to the Nile) and most of it is very dry and desert-like. I overhead some drawing conclusions about what life would have been like near the Nile and away from it. What a joyful feeling to have students wonder, investigate, and therefore learn on their own!

Observation #3

We arrived today at 8:35 am to a very hectic classroom. We watched the chaos as about five students had to leave the classroom for various pullout programs. Mr. F. has often expressed his frustration with these early-morning pullout programs because the students have to leave during the initial group time that he loves to be reserved for fostering classroom unity as well as the completion of the mystery poem which he swears by. It made me realize how flexible I will need to be in the school system in abiding by and upholding state standards.

Mr. F. suggested that we administer our pretest right away. He told us that we would have to accommodate for the various students not being there but to understand that we could just give them the pretest later. Mr. F. had the students sit at their desks quietly and told them that we had something really fun to do with them. Catherine R. and I immediately panicked because, no, our pretest was not going to be fun for them. We realized that the students expect from us lessons about gooey Oobleck substances that are going to absolutely astound scientists or a dramatic interpretation of Caps for Sale where they all get to dance around on the “stage” in the front of the classroom. We quickly corrected Mr. F. so that they students wouldn’t get their hopes up.

I started by telling the students that we were so excited to be back with their class because we are learning how to teach and they actually have a lot to teach us. I filled them in that we are going to be starting our unit once we get back from spring break but we first need to find out what they already know about ancient Egypt. I told them that they could really help us out by filling out the worksheet that we were about to pass out, but not to worry because it is not going to be graded. We passed out the worksheet and immediately decided to go over the front page first and then have the students complete the four multiple choice questions at the same time before we moved on. We went question by question and told the students to answer themselves. Mr. F. added that it will not help Miss Brown and Miss Robinson if they put down their classmates’ answers on their page. As far as I could tell, the students were relatively quiet. We then had the students turn to the back where I explained the last two questions—drawing a picture of an Egyptian building and the writing about what life would be like for a boy or a girl living in ancient Egypt. These second graders continue to impress me. It is very obvious that they are indeed second graders but I am amazed at how much a lot of them are writing and how much a lot of them know about subjects like ancient Egypt. Are the UVA professors sitting around at home reading encyclopedias with their children? One student wrote about the slaves in ancient Egypt who were dressed in rags when the rich men were dressed in fancy clothes and jewels. However, the discrepancy between students at this elementary school is still very apparent. One of the pull-out students who Catherine R. administered the test to later wrote about Niagra Falls being in ancient Egypt. I was impressed she knew about Niagra Falls but very clear that she would have a lot to learn in our unit.

We also passed out an “Interest Survey” to the students with eight or so topics about ancient Egypt on it. We instructed them to pick their top two topics that they would like to learn about in out unit. Their answers were overwhelmingly pyramids and mummies. This gave us a better idea not of the only topics that we should cover but maybe where we should start with our instruction. I want to start with what students want to learn about, captivate their attention, then teach them about the many facets of ancient Egypt.