Kindergarten Lesson 2

I think one of the most important qualities that a teacher can have is adaptability, however, I also feel that this is a difficult quality to develop. However, due to my own transportation mistake, I ended up being late to teach my second lesson to the morning kindergarten class, so I was forced to dramatically alter the lesson last-minute because we simply didn't have time for everything. The lesson as it was supposed to have gone is posted below, however, with the morning class I ended up doing the step 1 activity (in which we explored the lengths and widths to which our bodies can extend) and then leading the class in a game of "The Amazing Zoo Animal Choir" once they had gone to their separate tables (in which we explored the lengths and widths to which our voices can extend).

In this game, I had a student at each table choose an animal that they wanted their table to be (i.e. lions or monkeys), and then when I pointed at a table they would make their animal sounds. I encouraged them to explore the different tones and volumes that they could create with their voices by instructing them to be louder or softer, or to have deeper or higher pitched-voices. I was pretty proud of myself for making a last-minute adaptation like this! Fortunately I was able to do this lesson with both classes the next week, since I couldn't meet with the afternoon class on that particular day.

When I did this lesson as written with the morning class, I guess I hadn't put much thought into what the other students would do while the zoo customers were watching one group of students, so I felt bad because some of the kids appeared to be a little bored while only two groups were interacting with each other. So for the afternoon class, I adjusted. Instead of having one group of "customers" at a time, I had one group of "animals" at a time and had the entire class become the customers. I encouraged the customers to take photos, draw pictures, etc. and for those that were behaving well, I asked them one at a time what they "saw," to which the animals would adjust what they were doing. I even allowed the animals to get out of their "cages" and walk around the space and go up to people once in awhile.

To play around with creativity and characterization, I started asking the students about specific qualities of the animals they were looking at. I asked them questions like "Are these (mice) mean or nice?" "Big or small?" etc. If a student said "mean," then I would encourage the "mice" to make the meanest faces ever. There was one point where the mice escaped from their cages and started crawling around the classroom! Students, without my instructing, jumped up on their chairs and were screaming and laughing with excitement! Hopefully we didn't bother the other classes too much.

This lesson taught me a lot about student engagement and what it looks like, which came very much in handy in my future lessons.

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Casey Greenwood

BYU Arts Bridge

Kindergarten

Lesson 1: Zoo Part 2

Strand: Create, Perform

Standards:

• CR.1: Develop imagination to create artistic ideas and work.
• CR.2: Arrange the physical playing space to communicate mood, time, and locale.
• CR.5: Create character through physical movement, gesture, sound, and/or speech and facial expression.
• P.6: Use imagination to support artistic choices.

Objective: Students will demonstrate their ability to use their imagination, bodies, and voices to bring a setting to life by pretending to be animals and customers at a zoo.

Materials needed: Lots of open space!

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Hook: Ask the students what animals they might see at a zoo (ie monkeys, lions, elephants, etc.). Ask them to show you how those animals move and what they sound like.

Step 1: Group practice. Invite the students to play a game of “Follow the Leader” in which they will walk around the classroom while pretending to be certain animals. Start the game by being the leader, inviting them to portray their animals in different ways, such as being a big monkey vs. a small one, being a fast turtle vs. a slow one, or by having a deep dog bark instead of a high pitched one, etc.

Step 2: Assign roles to four different stations including a specific kind of animal for three of the stations (ie station 1 is the monkey station, station 2 is the tiger station, etc.), but assign one station to be the zoo customers. Assign the students a station that they will be a part of for the zoo game (this can be done by counting them off in 1s, 2s, 3s, etc. and have all of the 1s together, etc.). The zoo customers will walk altogether to each of the stations and observe the animals there. If they went to the lion group first, the lions would play on their own for a few seconds. The teacher will then ask the customers what they “see” at the zoo and will select students to give suggestions. For example, Joey might say “I see a lion climbing on rocks.” The lion group would then pretend to climb on rocks in their den. Sally might say “I see a monkey eating a banana!” or “I see a sleeping snake,” after which the monkey or snake groups would then reenact what Sally suggested. After going around to a couple of stations, switch roles and let a different group “see” the zoo.