Lesson 5: C

What I ended up teaching was actually really different from the lesson plan. I think I have learned a lot about classroom management with kindergarteners, and while I am definitely not perfect and often rely on my teacher partner for help, I can tell how much I have learned by how much I adapt while in the classroom, or between the morning and afternoon classes.

For this lesson, I had an idea that I thought might be too complicated, so I avoided writing it in the lesson plan. However, I decided to try this idea with the afternoon class and it ended up working MUCH better.

After discussing with my teacher partner and my mentor(s), I realized that collaboration in kindergarten doesn't have to be working with a group to make a group decision (because more opinions means more likelihood for arguments and chaos), but it could even be thinking about something and telling a partner that thing. So I tried to include a lot more two-person collaboration and less teamwork in this lesson.

Due to lack of time, Instead of reading the story, I told it from memory and showed pictures that were in a Gingerbread Man book that my teacher partner had in her classroom. Instead of clapping, I had the students say the "can't catch me" lines with me. I tried to get the morning class to spread out for step 2, but they kind of ended up being in a somewhat-spread clump on the carpet that we had read the story on.

I think I often get overwhelmed when giving instructions and think that I am not doing well enough, which often makes me second guess what I am saying, which then confuses the students because I explain the same thing three different ways or so. So that's definitely something I need to work on.

I did make sure to include an example and had a student act out with me an example of how the Gingerbread Man could get away, but I made the mistake of giving all the directions before that instead of giving them as we would go, or giving some before the example and some after. Because of that, I think the morning class was a little intimidated and didn't really know what to do.

But thus said, some of the kids were really excited to show what they had done! One partnership showed the Gingerbread Man getting ready to ride on a Crocodile across the river. However, I also found that many children raised their hand to volunteer not actually having anything prepared. I tried to walk these students through it like in the example and that seemed to work fairly well.

The afternoon class went much better, granted that I also figured out a better way to give the instructions for the step 2 activity. As aforementioned, I tried my original idea with the afternoon class and ended up liking it much better. Instead of having one child be the Gingerbread Man and one child be the c sound means of escape (which could get complicated, especially in "car" for example), I had one student be the Gingerbread Man and one student be the fox in each partnership. Then I had the students choose a c sound word that the Gingerbread Man could use to escape from the fox and show that in their frozen pictures. I found that the kids in the afternoon class were much more creative, but that's because they could use something in the scene instead of having to be something, which I think gave them a lot more freedom to be creative. The afternoon class were using things like cookie canons, cages, and candy walls to escape the fox.

Next time I teach this lesson, I'd like to spend more time on allowing the students to explore embodying the Gingerbread Man or the Fox, because I found that many of the students didn't know what to do with their bodies in their frozen positions, so we got a lot of similar physicalities. Totally my bad on that one.

On another note, sorry I post my pre-teaching lesson plans instead of my post-teaching, edited lesson plans. It would probably be more beneficial to post the latter, huh.

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Casey Greenwood

BYU Arts Bridge

Kindergarten

Lesson: C

Strand: Create, Perform

Standards:

• CR.1: Develop imagination to create artistic ideas and work.
• CR.5: Create character through physical movement, gesture, sound, and/or speech and facial expression.
• P.5: Use the body to communicate meaning through space, shape, energy, and gesture.

Objective: Students will show their ability to recognize the letter C by creating a different scene of the Gingerbread Man story with a partner.

Materials needed: Gingerbread Man story

Step 1: Invite the class to sit in a circle. Read the Gingerbread Man story to them, and ask them to clap their hands when they hear a C sound. Pause once in awhile as you read to invite them to pantomime certain activities (ie rolling the dough, running in place, etc.) and, after a couple of repetitions, say with the Gingerbread Man “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!”

Step 2: Have the students get with a partner, spread out, and face me. Together they will think of a C word that is another way that the Gingerbread Man could run away (if they can’t decide on one word, see if they can mix the two together somehow). For example, they could decide that he could take a car or ride on a crocodile to get away. One could be the Gingerbread Man and one could be the means of escape (ie crocodile) or another person, but remind them that they shouldn’t sit on each other if the Gingerbread Man is riding on something, but they could sit next to each other or the crocodile could kneel while the Gingerbread Man stands (maybe getting ready to get on), etc. If the Gingerbread Man is riding in a car, maybe the other student could be a person chasing the car (like the Little Old Lady or something). If both students want to be the Gingerbread Man, have them do it twice so each gets a turn. On the count of three, they will freeze in a position that shows the Gingerbread Man running away in this way. Have a few partnerships at a time stay frozen while everyone else observes and switch around until everyone has had a turn. As they are frozen, ask each partnership to explain their scene to the class.