Day Number Three with the Third Grade

Today, was the first day I taught lessons in this class. Actually, it was the first day I have ever taught a formal lesson in any classroom that is non-tennis related. I absolutely loved it!! I am not a very good public speaker and normally get nervous when doing class presentations or speaking in front of a large group, but similar to how I felt when I coached tennis, I think speaking in front of kids and working with them is much easier. I taught both a one-on-one spelling lesson and then a writing/designing lesson, which followed up on Liza's reading lesson. The focus of the lessons today was on sequencing. For my spelling lesson, which followed after my writing/designing lesson, I worked with a student on short /a/ and short /i/ sounds and word families for both short /a/ and /i/. My writing/designing lesson plan was focused on sequencing and on main events of a story. I had the students design their own comic strip, after showing examples and discussing the parts of a comic.

Overall, I think my lessons went well. I know Liza did a great job with her's and the teacher seemed happy with both of ours. Both Liza and I used something to throw at the students when they raised their hands (Liza used a very round pig stuffed animal-so funny, and I used a soft stress ball) and I think that helped to get the class more involved. I had trouble limiting the talking during the comic designing/writing part of the lesson though and at times walking around felt more like a parent than a teacher. I am not sure if there is any other good technique to quiet them besides team points (which I did not use today). I have also collected the comic strips and put them into a book for the class and as I went through them, I noticed that the boy who I work on spelling with wrote a comic about me-About the day he saved me! Definitely made me laugh! I think this was a fun lesson to teach but think it would be better to do at the end of the year, as some kids struggled. I also noticed through this assignment that there are some perfectionists in the class who kept re-doing and erasing, or also some people who got frustrated because they felt they didn't have good drawing skills. I found it a struggle for me to try and help everyone. I felt like I was jumping from student to student and could not spend the needed time with each one. I think that there should be some one-on-one time between the student and teacher at least a few times a week if possible.


Next class I will be teaching another class lesson, but this time a creative reading lesson, and then another one-on-one spelling lesson on long vowels and the CVCe pattern, focusing on learning when to use/when to not use a silent /e/ at the end of the word. I am excited to have another opportunity and to learn more from my next experience.