Seasons and Weather

This past week Saralyn and I taught the Kindergarten class a lesson about seasons and weather. We focused on the four seasons and what kind of clothes we wear in each seasons. We also talked about what trees look like during that season. Overall I think our lesson went really well. The kids seemed engaged and we could tell by the formative and summative assessment that they were retaining the information.

I think our biggest strength was the ELL pieces we incorporated. Being in the classroom every other week we have gotten to see many different lessons. We thought that the lessons could have used a little more accommodations for the ELL students in the classroom. We decided that we would make sure that the students were set up to exceed in the lesson. We started by incorporating their native language into the lesson. We began the lesson by playing a song about the season in Spanish. You could tell the kids really loved it. Jennifer was dancing the whole time and she kept looking up at us and saying, “This Spanish? This Spanish?” It was cute to see her recognize her native language and get excited about it. We also had another student who asked if we could play it again. They really responded well to that video. We also had picture cards with an image of a tree in that season, the season in English, and the season in Spanish. We thought these cards would be very helpful to the students since it incorporated a visual and both languages. This was also helpful to the assistant teachers so they had the Spanish translation for the season. Since one of the big parts of our lesson was being able to communicate and draw different articles of clothing we included a vocab sheet. Each group had a laminated vocabulary sheet that included many different pictures of clothing with their English word. We were hoping that this sheet would help by giving the students some ideas for what they could draw. We were also using it as a tool incase the children did not know the English word for the clothing they could use the sheet to point to it so the teacher could help them learn the word. Another accommodation we made was to allow the students to draw what their person would wear. This alleviated some of the stress of having to rely solely on their ability to vocalize what they are thinking. I think it was these pieces that made our lesson as successful as it was.

There were a couple aspects of our lesson that I wish were stronger. Right in the beginning we asked the students if they could name the four seasons. It took a lot of encouraging for the students to even name one and most of the time they just kept saying the weather and not the season. Originally our lesson was a follow up to the first seasons and weather lesson. We were hoping to build off of their lesson by only going over the seasons and not explicitly teaching them. Even with that aside, I was surprised by their limited knowledge of the four seasons. I wish that we would have known that from the beginning so we could have restructured our lesson to allow for more time of explicit teaching of the four seasons. Unfortunately there really was no way of us knowing that. We had our lesson timed out and we did not allot any time to explicit teaching of the seasons. We were able to quickly review them and with the song I think the students ended up with a better understanding of the four seasons. One way this could be improved would be to take an initial assessment to see what the students already know and how we could build on their previous knowledge. If we were their everyday teachers that knowledge would be easier to gather but only being in the classroom ever other week made it difficult to know our students academic ability. Another thing we could have done would have been to ask their teacher if she knew what kind of knowledge they have on the four seasons.

Another thing I wish we had done differently was focus on either the clothing or the trees. Going through the stations in only four minutes really made it difficult for the assistant teachers to get to the trees and the clothing and in some cases they did not get to one. If we would have focused on just one it would not have been so rushed. Originally each group was going to be in charge of one season and that allowed for enough time to focus on each of the different aspects. We ended of switching it to shorter stations that all the kids were rotated through but we did not take the shorter time into account when looking at all the pieces they were required to do. One way to make sure this does not happen again is to just be very aware of time management. Before each lesson the teacher should review how long each piece should take. There should also be extra room allotted for any unforeseen circumstances like the students not being as familiar with the topic as we anticipated. This extra caution with time management could easily solve any problems with feeling like the students are being rushed through the project or having to skip pieces.

Overall I was very proud of our lesson and I think we did a good job of working with the ELL population, which was the goal from the very beginning. My personal goal was to learn how to challenge the students and engage them. I think I was able to accomplish these goals in my lesson. I was able to challenge students because anytime I asked a student a question I tried to find a follow up question to really make them analyze their answer. I also feel that we kept all the students engaged because we tied in elements of their native language so every student felt comfortable participating.

Exceeds:

1. Planning- Extra resources

2. Teaching- Laminated materials and gave them to the teacher after the lesson

3. Reflection- Responded to two classmates