The Perfect Storm

A week of snow days, trick or treating the night before, a sugar high....I think we all encountered the perfect storm this week.   This is also our third week in front of the class and you can tell the shine has worn off!  Just as Arlette and I have become more comfortable in front of the students, they are becoming more comfortable with us. Which includes pushing the envelope of behavior, which is to be expected.  Overall, I think we have a really great class who are all geared up to learn.  I totally get it, they are excited…science lessons are exciting, they are working in groups, they are handling all the materials and they are all eight and nine years old! I understand that it is easy to start to slip off task or need a reminder or two or five that they need to keep working.   Arlette and I have found that they respond very well when we give five minute timed warnings that they need to conclude the task they are doing and be ready to move on.    I have also found that when the kids are having some difficulty staying on task, just getting down lower so you are looking them in the eyes or a light touch on the shoulder helps them regroup and focus.   

The process skills we worked on in our mineral lesson keeping accurate records.   Arlette and I have been working really hard the last couple of weeks to get across to our students that although the experiments are fun, they also need to be documenting carefully what they observe.   I think it is easy when there is a lot of hands-on activites going on that the kiddos don’t want to stop and take a pen to paper.   As we walked around observing the groups I would say to the kids, “working off only your observations, describe to me mineral 1.”  It seemed to be a succesful prompt, the kids could quickly see if their records were lacking and hopefully they could see that keeping records serve a purpose it isn't just busy work we have them do. 

AND IN CONCLUSION…

If only the students would just let us give the lesson conclusion as it is written on our plan!!  J   Our group is great, they come up with great questions and connections that they are so eager to share but I think if they knew we had a pre-scripted conclusion that would really tie our whole lesson together they would be sitting in rapt silence! HA!   I know it is vital that we get the wrap up in so it we are trying to be very good about making time for it.    Both Areltte and I are becoming more skilled at tying our students questions and comments into what we need to say so that our students are heard but our conclusion is also getting across.  Becoming being the operative word!   

We can all only get better right?