It was Emilia’s turn to teach today. The focus of this economics lesson was: people are both buyers and sellers of goods and services. When Emilia and I entered the classroom, the students were going crazy! They had just returned from an assembly and discovered that the leprechaun had paid them a visit! The leprechaun had disorganized their classroom, dumped glitter on the carpet, and left each student a little treat on their desk. The students were so excited and couldn’t wait to explain what had happened when they saw us. As I have mentioned before, our first graders have a quite a difficult time staying focused. With this additional distraction, Emilia and I were afraid that they would now have even more attention problems. Unfortunately, we were correct.
Emilia began with a short review of the previous day’s lesson. She then conducted an interactive read-aloud with William Miller’s Rent Party Jazz. This book addressed the concept of needs (paying the rent) and the idea of providing a service (playing the trumpet) in order to earn money. During the reading, the children in the first two rows on the carpet remained focused, answering Emilia’s questions throughout the story. However, the other students in the class were having a hard time paying attention. Many of them seemed to be more fascinated with the glitter that the leprechaun had left on the carpet than the story Emilia was reading. I moved to closer to them, so I could remind them to pay attention without distracting the rest of the class.
Next, Emilia asked the children to return to their seats. She had created a poster with pictures of different goods and services. Using the integrative model, she asked students to draw conclusions about the poster. Again, during this discussion, the students remained fidgety (playing with things inside their desks, etc). Even their teacher had to remind them several times to pay attention. Then Emilia asked the students to come to the board and place a sticky-note identifying the buyer and seller in the pictures of services. The student’s interest was certainly renewed at the prospect of getting an opportunity to come to the board. They were eager to participate, raising their hands even before Emilia asked the question.
Emilia then had the students fill out mini “dictionaries” using the important economics vocabulary that she had taught that day. Emilia assisted in the creation of the definitions, but for the most part, they were thought up by the students. By creating the definitions for themselves, the students were constructing their own meaning (and would hopefully be able to remember it better). After developing the ideas together, Emilia wrote the definitions of the vocabulary words on the board. The only suggestion that I would have for Emilia would be to label the definition with the corresponding word. Since the definitions were scattered around the chalkboard (to avoid other work), not having the corresponding word written above caused some confusion for the students.
Some students were able to write the definitions faster than others. We anticipated this, and consequently had another activity available for those who had finished early. The last activity was a formative assessment (exit cards) in which students were asked to provide one example of a good and one example of a service.
Emilia and I understand the importance of keeping our first graders active and involved during the lesson. However, because this lesson included a lot of vocabulary words and important concepts that needed to be taught and thoroughly explained, not every activity could be hands on. I wish I knew how to keep students from being so fidgety and restless. In addition, I am interested to learn how to discipline one student without taking away too much instructional time from those who are not misbehaving. I would really like to learn about behavior management! I am disappointed that the Curry school does not provide us with adequate instruction on disciple issues. It is unrealistic to assume that everyone will be able to take the Behavior Management class. Personally, just to fulfill all the requirements (area requirements for Curry and the College, major requirements, and the 102 College credits) I am taking 19 credits now, must take four classes this summer, and probably 18 credits next spring. I know it is my own fault for taking on so much – but there is no possible way for me to enroll in behavior management. I just wish that maybe Curry could incorporate discipline into some of our other classes.
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