Fifth day teaching

09.09.09

Personally I was not happy with the majority of my lesson today. I did a PDHPE lesson focussing on healthy and unhealthy foods that children eat at school. I began the lesson with a game about different food groups on the smart board that motivated the students. I then gave explicit instructions on how they were going to behave and what they were going to do exactly once they were outside. We walked to the canteen area; this was a bit of a challenge to say the least. My teacher told me afterwards that it is best not to have your back turned to the class when you’re walking them somewhere. The students loved the game I did with them outside the canteen though. However they became a bit rowdy at the end. I then led them back inside and got them to make their own canteen menu. They absolutely loved this activity and really got involved.
As a teacher I need to follow through with consequences far more, and praise students a lot more than I have been. I used a PowerPoint that my CT had created about classroom rules at the end of the lesson which allowed students to recall the rules of the classroom that they are expected to keep.

Fourth Day Teaching

08.09.2009
Today I did another music lesson. This time I did a different chant. I took the son g Mary had a Little Lamb and changed the lyrics to make it about food. For example:



Mary had a little apple, little apple, little apple,
Mary had a little apple its skin was red and crunchy
And everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went
And everywhere that Mary went she had a little munchy.



As an introduction I played the tune of Mary had a Little Lamb on my violin which really engaged the students. I then taught them the chant through imitation and allowed them to yet again explore dynamics. I then handed out a worksheet to reinforce the idea of healthy eating.

At the end of the day my teacher got me to monitor the structured play session. This lesson was different because it was a mixture of Kindergarten and Year One students. I gave the Year one’s name tags in order to remember their names and make sure the lesson went as smoothly as possible.
The activities I choose were building blocks, sand pit, shopping, lego and the car mat.

Third Day Teaching

04.09.2009
For this lesson I did a craft activity as it was apart of the structured play segment. I decided to make paper caterpillars as it continued on from a lesson they did earlier in the week on “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. I pre-made the lines on the paper for the students to cut out. Overall the lesson went very well I developed a great rapport with the students. In terms of the students they kept on task and seemed to enjoy making their caterpillars. As a teacher I tried to keep my directions short and clear.

I also an English lesson on sight words. Students were familiar with a lot of sight words and I allowed them to do some revision on them. Then I taught them a new sight word, “after”. I used strategies such as getting students to take a picture of the word and putting it in their head, writing the word on their arm, in the arm, and on the floor. Students responded very well to this lesson and most students were able to identify the words. As a teacher I ought to praise students more and attempt to achieve minimal call outs throughout the lesson. I also did a Math lesson focusing on “friends of ten”. The students really enjoyed this lesson.

Second Day Teaching

03.09.2009
Today I did a PDHPE lesson which focused on health practices that keep us healthy and food options that are either healthy or unhealthy. The main point of the lesson was to allow students to come to an understanding of healthy and unhealthy foods and realize the importance of them in their diets. I used two different lunch boxes- one healthy, the other unhealthy, to start a discussion on food. I also got the students to complete a game on the Smart board that can be found at http://www.crickweb.co.uk/fruit-english.html and I got the students to complete a worksheet on fruit.
In terms of the students they seemed to thoroughly enjoy all the activities and worked well.
As a teacher I need to work on giving clear instructions about how they should move between activities and wait until they are all ready before getting students to move.
In terms of structure I made sure that I had all my resources organised prior to the lesson in order for it to run as smoothly as possible. The use of ICT seemed to engage and motivate the students.

First Day Teaching

02.09.2009
For the first day of prac I was required to do a Music lesson. I personally enjoy music a lot so I was very excited to undertake this lesson with the class. The general idea of the lesson was that I, as the teacher, would introduce the students to a chant through the use of imitation. The topic the students were doing was Healthy Choices so I chose a chant based on food, namely Hot Cross Buns. I got the students to experiment with dynamics once they had become familiar with the chant. Lastly I gave them a worksheet to complete. There were some classroom management issues such as talking while teacher is talking, calling out, and getting out of seat without permission. In regards to students they seemed to be actively engaged in the activity and complete the worksheet satisfactory. As a teacher I could’ve praised students that were working well a lot more, and remember to stop and wait for full attention. I did, however, speak clearly and had excellent volume in my voice. My teacher was also pleased with the way that I used ‘partner work.’ In terms of structure the transitions could have been better prepared, however it was well structured in terms of where they were going and what they were doing.