My Service Learning Observations: Part Three

The teacher I observe in my service learning classroom is very good at engaging her students. I have seen multiple activities that the kids find engaging! One activity that stuck out to me was when the students were practicing spelling words. The teacher sprayed a small amount of shaving cream on each desk. The kids then spread it around their table. When they were done they had a thin layer of shaving cream on their desk. A Tupperware full of paper towels was at each table and a plastic sack for garbage if the kids needed to wipe off their hands. Then all the kids took a Popsicle stick and wrote their spelling words as the teacher read them out. What a fun and memorable way to practice spelling! 

Another engaging activity was when the teacher passed out a plain deck of cards to each table. The kids were going to practice their math by playing math card games. There was quite a variety and I'll be honest I don't remember most of them. But one of the games was a lot like war. Two kids flip a card over at a time and they add them together. When they know the answer they shout it out and whoever says it first wins. These games were really fun and exciting for these kids. They play these math card games in their class pretty frequently and their teacher has given them all a deck of cards and instructions for all the games to keep and take home. I love that her students have been encouraged to keep practicing at home in a fun and exciting way. Because of this they will be more likely to practice!

One other engaging activity that my teacher has her students participate in is a program that the students play on tablets. This program focuses on teaching reading, spelling, letter sounds etc. This program modifies to each student and their individual level. They do this 3 days a week for 20 minutes at a time. The kids really seem to like playing on the tablets as a way to learn! They get to play games and participate in a wide variety of activities to help them grasp concepts!

There are times when the activities or lessons in this class are not engaging. This class starts their day working on a worksheet. A couple of weeks ago the worksheet they worked on was a groundhog day coloring page. I did not think that this worksheet was very engaging and there could have been a better way to discuss groundhog day. It seemed like pointless busy work and it wasted 15 minutes of class time. If it were my classroom I would have gotten up in front of the class and explained what groundhog day is shown pictures of groundhogs and shown a video of this years groundhog day! This way I would be showing the kids exactly what groundhog day is and we'd find out if we would have 6 more weeks of winter or if we would get Spring!