Lab Experience - Week Four

            This week was a very hectic, but short week because on Thanksgiving. Among all of the holiday festivities and plays that the children were putting on, I had to teach two lessons this week. One lesson Monday and one lesson Tuesday, both of which had to be observed. With only having these two days I decided to do a two day lesson on the story called The Lotus Seed. Monday I introduced the key words in the story. To start off the lesson I asked the students what was special to them to introduce the special seed that was going to be in the story. Then I assisted the students in a short story called The Special Seed which had all of the key words throughout. I had the story for them to see on a PowerPoint as well as a handout for them to highlight all of the words as we went through and read. Once we read the story, I went over each word and gave them the definition and a picture that they could relate with the word. For the students to stay attentive while I was teaching them these words I made them each individual dictionaries that had the definition already on each page and all they had to do was fill in the missing word and draw a picture. This seemed to help the students a lot, not only so they would be paying attention, but it gave them a tangible object that they could keep to remember each word. After that, I displayed a piece of butcher paper on the board with all of the words scattered on it. The students were given magazines and put into groups of two or three and they had to find pictures that represented each word. They all loved this activity because they were able to interact with their classmates and have fun at the same time while learning the material. I was surprised at how well the students remembered what each word meant because they did not even have to use their personal dictionaries for assistance. To help the students remember all of this information, I gave each student a key term where they had to describe/act out the meaning of the word. Lastly, for independent practice I gave the students a worksheet where they had to find the missing key word that fit into each sentence. All of the students enjoyed this activity and I could see that they were ready to move on to reading the story on Tuesday.
            Tuesday was a fun day because it was the last day before break and there were so many fun activities going on. There were Thanksgiving plays, arts and crafts, and a more relaxed atmosphere in the classrooms because the teachers wanted to leave on a good note for the break. However, I did have to teach a lesson today. I did a continuation lesson from yesterday. Since the children already knew the key terms associated with the story, today we went further and read the actual story, The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland. To start of the lesson I showed them a picture of a building in a foreign country and they had to name as many things as they could that look different from the buildings here in the United States. This made the connection to the story where the grandmother went to a foreign country. After that I explained that the genre of the story was realistic fiction, the characters, and the setting. Then we started reading the story. I randomly called on the children to read because they all were eager to read. As we were reading the story I asked them comprehension questions to see how much they really understood the story. The students did well answering the questions and seemed to be paying close attention to the events in the story. Once the story was finished, I provided each student with an envelope that had the events of the story in random order. They each had to correctly sequence the events and glue them in the correct order on a piece of paper. The last activity I gave them each a seed to remember the story by and I had them write a couple of sentences as to what they would do with this seed and why. They also were to draw a picture to represent what they were going to do with this seed. I loved being able to walk around and see their creativity in full force. All of their answers were very well thought and some were very creative!