This week I added morning meetings to my list of responsibilities. The first 2 days I played a name game in which the child said every childs name that had been said before them. I chose to use the co-teaching strategy of team teaching because I knew otherwise the game would last too long and I'd lose the childrens attention. The game was repeated the second day because the children were struggling so much on names the previous day. I felt very confident with my lesson plans.
Today I chose a new game in which the children threw a ball of yarn to the person they were saying good morning to. The children became very excited and started blurting during the game. I wish that I had added more proactive planning into my lesson plan, acknowledging that they were going to be very excited but that I needed them to stay quite rather than trying to regain control once it had gotten loud. I also wish that I had followed my gut instinct in not attempting to "untangle". Initially I thought that I would be able to help them threw the process because I knew who had tossed the ball to who. However, kids quickly let go of the string and grabbed onto it in another spot and I was unable to talk them through the process as their volume and excitement was ever increasing. I was proud of myself for recognizing defeat as quickly as I had and transitioning into the activity without the students realizing that my activity had failed.
Overall I feel that I have learned a lot from my past experiences and have implemented them well into my current classroom lessons.
Julie
Do you think your morning meeting strategies for promoting name-learning is working? How would you know if it was? Through listening to students, seeing with whom they choose to sit, quizzing them?
ReplyDeleteThe more you can put kids in charge of the classroom (when they've demonstrated that they're ready for the responsibility), the better. You might even ask the group if they have any good ideas for name-learning activities. I've found that my students are usually as capable as me at coming up with interesting ways to learn.