My lesson at Brigham

Today was finally the long awaited day! I was able to give the lesson Julia and I created at Brigham. We were in the preschool classroom today. Our job was to wrap up the 5 senses unit we have been working on with this specific classroom. At first we thought that this might be challenging because we were not in charge of teaching and new content only reviewing content that had already been taught. However, after thinking about the different avenues we could use to review this content we decided on small group rotations. We were lucky enough to have five amazing assistants with us today in preschool. One of these girls manned each station. There was a seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling station. The eleven students that were present today were split up into five groups. Each group was able to spend about five minutes at each station.

At each station they were doing something different. At the hearing station the students were listening to different familiar sounds and identifying what sound they had hear using their ears. At the seeing station the students were categorizing many random items by color using their eyes. At the touching station the students were feeling items with their hands to decide if they were hard or soft. At the tasting station the students were able to taste salt and sugar. They identified each as sweet and salty. Then the students categorized pictures of foods into the categories salty or sweet. Last, but not least, was the smelling station. At this station the students were able to smell many different scents from bottles. They then matched the scent in the bottle to a picture of what it smelled like.

I think that the lesson went very well! It was evident that the students had worked in small group rotations before because they were so quick and quiet when we switched groups. The one aspect of the lesson that we were worried about was the transitions from small group to small group. We knew that this would either make or break the flow of our lesson. If the students had never done a lesson like this before I would be extremely surprised and even prouder of how well they handled the responsibility of traveling from one spot to another.

We also knew that the classroom had some English Language Learners in it so we were sure to include many pictures and hands on activities. We have learned this semester that providing visuals, modeling and hands on activities can be very helpful for second language learners. This way they do not have to rely so much on the language to show what they have learned or express what they want to say. Personally, I did not experience any students who did not understand the directions or what they were supposed to be doing. However, I was observing a specific child most of the time during small groups so I was not able to personally see every child.

If we were to do the lesson all over again I would change two major aspects of the lesson. First, I would have asked the teacher to group the students. We were only in the preschool classroom three times this entire semester. So while we were starting to know the students a little bit better I do not feel like we know them well enough to put them in appropriate groups. Today we put the students in groups based off of who they sat by on the carpet. Which, looking back on it may not have been the best decision. I know the students in my clinical placement sit next to their best friends at round up time which sometimes leads to behavior problems. Thankfully, today we did not have any major behavior problems. But I do feel like we paired some very outgoing students with some extremely shy students. What I found was that the outgoing students were answering all of the questions and at times talked over the quiet student. In one specific group a little boy would wait for the more outspoken student to answer the question that was asked. Then he would repeat whatever answer was just stated even if it was incorrect. I think if we would have asked the teachers in the room to pick the groups they would have been able to use their deeper individual knowledge of the students to form better groups.

The second major problem I would change is something that I have wanted to change since our first week at Brigham. I always feel like the end of our lessons are a bit choppy because we are unsure where the students are supposed to go next or what the teach has planned for them. This causes us to close the lesson and walk out of the room without knowing much of what happens when we leave. I think it would create a much smoother transition if we knew what was going to happen next and could transition the students into that activity before we leave.

All in all, I did not learn much more or make any advances toward by goal today. I feel like many of the students in the preschool classroom speak enough English to actively participate in our lesson that we had planned for them. This meant that not many techniques or tools were used other than visual and hands on approaches, of course. I have learned a lot about teaching in a preschool or kindergarten setting while at Brigham. Today I learned that if you give a preschooler a tiny taste of salt many of them will look at you like you lied to them or like they are going to cry! Honestly, this is something I did not even consider when writing the lesson plan because older students know what salt tastes like so it wouldn’t come as so much of a surprise to them. There are so many different considerations you have to take when teaching young children. But the number on consideration I have learned is how detailed you need to be about directions. They need to be repeated and modeled for them multiple times.

Exceeds: I included a picture quote and related my experience back to my clinical placement.