Blog Entry #4 

In my concept map, I included in the creativity section to allow the students to create scenarios and situations for the learning, addition and subtraction to take place. I have seen my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Holden engage the learners in many meaningful ways. These include:  1. While teaching the first graders simple subtraction, she used the smart board and allowed the children to move around laminated pictures of cookies. Multiple kids were allowed to come to the board to add and "eat" the cookies, then the entire class would count how many cookies were taken away. 

In my concept map, under fun and games, I included to have the students encourage and cheer on other students when they have a success. 2. I saw this in the classroom, when after a small field trip, to say thank you to the volunteers, she asked the class which cheer they would like to give for each parent/volunteer. This gave the students choices and options and taught them to show gratitude and respect.

3. While teaching number order, the teacher created a game that each student worked on with another student. They would roll some dice, and then look at the number chart on their desk. If they saw the number, they would cross it out with a dry erase marker. It appeared more as a fun activity to the students rather than a math exercise.

A non-engaging exercise I witnessed was learning phonetics, while the children were sitting on the rug. The assistant teacher was showing screens on the white board, but lecturing to the students what all the words meant and how to create them. The teacher wasn't asking any questions, and if she did, she answered them herself. Very shortly, the kids were bored, picking on each other and not paying attention.  

To make this phonetics lesson more engaging, I would have laminated words, and letter groups that children can hold and come to the front. All the students can direct where each child can stand to create different words and sounds. Or another idea is to have the children, while sitting at the rug, to raise their hands and answer questions of words and sentences that have those word orders.