This past week was my first week in a
Brigham elementary classroom. My group was in the Kindergarten classroom for
thirty minutes. In that time we did five stations on the five senses. We started
with an introduction, which included a five senses song. Then we broke the
students into groups and sent them through four-minute rotations. There was a
station for each sense. In the hearing station they listened to different
recordings on an iPhone and had to determine what they were. In the seeing
station they looked at different objects and talked about the colors. In the
touching station they squeezed balloons filled with different materials and
tried to decide what was in them. In the smelling station they smelled
different materials in paper bags and talked about what they thought they were.
In the tasting station they tasted two candies and talked about the
characteristics of each. Finally we brought it back together on the carpet and
talked about what we did at each station. We talked a little more about why we
use our five senses and how it helps us in the real world. We ended by
practicing our song a couple more times.
I was in charge of the closing. My only
plan was to review all the stations with the kids and review the song. I think
the closing went pretty well. The children were getting antsy on the carpet but
it wasn’t that difficult to bring it all together. They were also not that engaged
in the song and I felt it was easier to practice the order of the pointing
before we jumped into the song.
Looking back there were a couple things
I would have done differently and I wished my group had done differently. I
think one of the most important things is to spend a lot of time planning.
Being intentional with everything done in the classroom can insure that the students’
needs are met. For the song I wish I had translated it into Spanish. I thought
about it last minute and debated trying to translate it on the spot but I was worried
I would make a mistake and embarrass myself. I also wish the visuals we had
were bigger so the students could have seen them and used them as a reference.
In the groups I think it would have been good to have different pictures of
things to help the children understand better. Like in the smelling station one
of the bags was perfume and if the students didn’t know that word they might
have been very confused. Having a picture to pull out to help them visualize it
would have been very helpful. Also in the listening station they played a piano
and some of the children might not have been familiar with that instrument. I
even saw one student pretending to play the piano but he did not have the
vocabulary to express the word. Having the picture could have helped him participate.
My goal was all about keeping the
students engaged and challenged throughout the lesson. I think this could have
been accomplished more if I would have included their native language of Spanish
whenever possible. Also the use of visuals would have insured that every
student could participate despite their language ability.
Exceeds:
This video includes a lot of visuals when presenting the words in English which would have been very helpful during the lesson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cWhNPiZZI
This is a bilingual video that would have been a great resource.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4qcu-Tc4Y
This image could have been printed out and posted at each center and also at the front of the room for the song.
Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job closing the lesson! I think having you go first would have been really beneficial for the children to learn the senses song. The way you slowed down the song and the actual part about the five senses was awesome. Not only that, but you reviewed the senses numerous times in order to make sure the children took away what they were while doing the song. Having the visuals around was also a great way to help the children. I liked that you first pointed to the pictures when singing about the sense, and then moved to actually pointing on your own body for them to mirror you. I honestly think the children were able to grasp what the five senses were and what parts of our bodies we use in order to use the five senses.
My goal was similar to yours: keeping them engaged and being able to communicate with all the students. I agree with you that having the song in Spanish would help the kids immensely. I also would have loved to speak Spanish to some of the kiddos because I did run into a few of them that wouldn’t speak English to me. They were trying to describe what they were feeling in Spanish words, but I did not understand the word they were using. I would have loved to know what they thought it was, rather than passing it off as if they did not say the right word.