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!