This week at Brigham has given me
so much to reflect on! This week was not only my week to be in the classroom
but also my week to teach my 5 Senses lesson plan to the preschoolers. We had the two groups of students smell five
different bottles. The first time the smelled the bottles they circled a
happy/frowny face on a sheet of paper if they did/did not like the way it
smelled. The second time around we had the students try to guess what was in
the bottles. To go along with this
activity we also read a book and played a song for the students. Just these few
activities showed me so many things to think about when it comes to my goals in
this classroom this semester.
The most prominent case that got me
thinking for this blog post was a specific student who caught my
attention. While I worked with my groups
of students in the first smelling round I would ask them if they thought that
the item in the bottle smelled good or bad, did they like it or did they not
like it? Once the bottle with the onion came around and he responded “Good.” I
knew something was not right. Most of
the students said that this bottle did not smell good, I was not sure how to
approach this situation other than to let him smell it again. I took the bottle
and sniffed it myself to be sure that it was the onion. “Are you sure this smells good? Let’s smell
it one more time.” Even after I let him smell it a second time he gave me a
very sad look and said “Good”.
To give a reminder my goal is to
learn how to communicate better with students whose first language is not
English. In the coming weeks I feel that
I would definitely like to work with this student to reach my goal. When we
gathered at the carpet my Co-Teacher, Ali asked a question “What do you guys
think was in this bottle, raise your hand if you can tell me”. This boy raised
his hand and responded by saying “Good”. She then allowed him to sniff the
bottle again and ask “What do you think is in there that is making it smell
like that”, the boy responded by saying “Good”.
I can infer from this experience
that this student heard me say one word that he knew in English and ran with
it. I can see that there are only a few
students that can fluently speak English in this classroom, which can promote a
challenge if the teacher does not speak any other languages fluently. It made me feel so sad to see this child’s
lack of communication abilities. I hope
to be able to work with this child during my classmate’s lessons and find ways
for him to learn how to communicate with us.
I wonder how this student in
particular communicates with his teacher. Does she speak his language fluently?
How does she know when he is understanding what is going on in the room? There
are so many questions that have risen from this one instance and I don’t know
how to answer them. I can see in this
classroom there is a lack of comprehension when it comes to verbal
questioning.
In a perfect world I would love to
say “I will make connections with each and every one of the students and I will
change their life. They will be speaking English by the end of the semester.”
In reality I am in their classroom once every two weeks for only a half
hour. This is my second week in this
room and I sadly can recall one or two names but still cannot place those names
with faces.
I can include some areas of
improvement for this lesson plan. There are some things that I would do differently
the next time that I implemented this lesson plan. This includes; more direct instruction,
switch groups with Ali, and using a different video, or using more interaction
with the video. This first thing that I
would change would be using more direct instruction so that the students and
co-teachers have a good idea of where we would have liked to go with this
lesson plan.
In order to give more direct
instruction to this set of students in particular I would maybe want to model
what we were doing at the carpet before we split off into groups. By
doing this I can show the students, visually, what they need to do. This would
be extremely helpful for any ELL students in the classroom. The second change I
would make is to, mid-lesson, switch tables with Ali to see what the other half
of the class is doing and work with those students. This would ensure that I
could see and hear what the students are doing and saying, in turn allowing me
to assess the students learning. The third and final change I would make is to
use a different video song or to use the same one but add more interaction with
it. We had the students touch their nose to the beat of the song as the video
sang about how we use our nose to smell.
I think that there are several different videos out there that are more
interactive and certainly more things that we could have the students do with
their bodies to encourage physical activity.
Although there are plenty of
changes that I would make I would say that we did have strengths in our lesson
plan. I believe that the book we read to the students was a great fit! It was
very descriptive about the smells and the places we smell them. The evidence
was present when our students started to shout out things that they have
smelled as well as where they smelled it.
The students became very excited about telling use what they have
smelled and learning about smelling.
This lesson included student
interest in the simple fact that they were engaged and excited to smell what
was in the bottles. Young children love to solve mysteries and having them
guess what was in the bottles really appealed to the students in this way. My
knowledge was shown in the beginning of the lesson when we explained to the
students that our nose helps us smell rather than saying “Our nose is what
makes us smell”. I know that this is not the case, the nose brings the scents
up to the brain and our brain references the smells, in the most basic
explanation. The students understanding was shown when they answered all the
questions about what they thought was in the bottle and could tell us what
helps us smell. This occurred throughout the smelling as well as when we regrouped
and talked about what we did at the carpet.
Over all, I believe that this
lesson was very successful. The students showed an understanding at the end of
the lesson that our nose helps us smell.
A select few were also able to identify what was in the bottle. The students were also able to show their
understanding of if they liked the way something smelled of if they did not
like it. I have included a link to a unit on smelling that would be very helpful
for my peers to look at to start generating ideas about teaching in their own
classroom!
Exceeds: exceeded the word count by writing 1,260
rather than the required 1,000 words. I also included a link for my peers
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