China Teaching Day 4
Scavenger Hunt as an ice breaker. The teachers were fully engaged.
Today I want you to think in pictures. The story is that of the Trojan Horse. Draw it out.
Homeroom.
Bad joke. I did two bad jokes. I explained both of them. One of the neat things that happened
In order to lay the ground work for the lesson plan format, we had the teachers review a wonderful pamphlet called: Curriculum & Project Planner by Incentive Publications (World Book, written by Sandra Schurr. Specifically, we reviewed both Bloom’s Taxonomy and William’s Creativity Taxonomy. We also reviewed the Suggested Student Products and Performances. The teachers were very interested in this resource. We reviewed several of the options and had the teachers talk about how they would design these projects too. Next, we talked briefly about the optional Assessment Formats. Finally, there is a chart of Sample Learning Tasks. These are organized by subject area.
We shared a lesson plan format with the teachers. My teaching partner modeled a lesson that we then presented to the teachers. The lesson plan format was filled out using the document camera. Next, we presented the lesson. The lesson has two teachers compete using a remote control car. The students compete in how fast they can maneuver the car around. The goal is for the teachers to then describe the car. Those descriptions identify the prepositions.
We had a long conversation and had to provide several examples of why Fast is slow; Slow is fast. This is something that the teachers are very concerned about – just like most teachers with whom I worked.
We also had students select Clock Buddies. We explained how Clock Buddies work and had them identify a buddy for each hour. We shared how this is used to pair kids up quickly. This was another example of Fast is slow;Slow is fast since it is slow the first time, but after that is very quick. Everyone found their 10 o’clock buddy. We pointed out how fast the pairing occurred.
We also had the teachers create a shared story to demonstrate prepositions. The story started with selecting a location. A teacher was selected to do the cover page. Another teacher was selected to do the Word page at the end. Then the first student started the story by saying a sentence out loud. after the teacher contributed their sentence with a preposition in it, that teacher was handed a blank piece of paper to write down their sentence and add a picture. The next student continues the story. The teacher doing the word page writes down each preposition as it is read out loud. At the end of the process, the papers are collected in order and form a complete shared story.
Every day the teachers write in their reflective notebook. This was originally called a Reflective Journal, however, a journal is like a diary in China. Thus, some of the students were hesitant to write in it. Name change to Reflective Notebook solves that issue. These notebooks will be collected.
A couple of observations about the classroom that we are in. The room has a presentation stand, a chalkboard that has two sections, _one slides over the chalkboard or the interactive whiteboard. There is a raised stage in the front of the room as well. There is no teacher desk.
Leave a Reply