Lesson #1 – 3/13/2007

Coming back from Spring Break on the beach and going into the classroom to teach was a struggle – I guess this is what it will be like to come back to teaching after the long summer break. We still don’t have all of our lessons written out completely for the entire unit so this is still frustrating, I hope the unit goes well…
I was nervous about our lesson because it had been a while since I had taught in Ms. A’s class and her expectations are so high from everyone. Today we taught about economic responsibility and making good choices. I am so amazed at student responses and they never cease to amaze me. I should have anticipated their ability to answer the questions and in turn ask me complicated questions. When we discussed chores and asked the students to illustrate a chore that they do and write about it, some students responded that they don’t do chores…only if they had been raised in my house! This has to be a completely different generation from mine where the students don’t even make up their own beds or know what it’s like to clean their room. On the other extreme, many of the students had many responsibilities in their homes, the range was wide.
Overall the lesson went well, and after meeting with Ms. A, I was confident in our success. She had nothing but compliments and loved our incorporation of literature into the lesson. It felt good to have her mark of approval!

Lesson #2 – 3/15/2007

(My partner taught this lesson on her own)


Lesson #3 – 3/16/2007

Nervousness…again…I had to teach by myself! Surprisingly, it went well and I once again I underestimated student ability. Today I did a lesson on budgeting and helped students to create a mock budget of limited “tickets” that they would be able to use for their Market Day where they sell and buy items that they created with the rest of the first grade. Because of the different levels of math abilities, I was concerned as to if all the students would be able to create and work with this “budget”. Before actually creating the budget, I used a website that I learned about in a past class and it was really successful with the students. When it came to creating the budgets, I was able to further my lesson and actually have the students create math problems on the board to illustrate the purchases they would make. This was a “last minute” incorporation into the lesson but it worked well and I was able to implement something that can be used to make the lesson “cross curriculum.


Lesson #4 – 3/20/2007

I can’t get this book out of my head – “Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Saturday”. After I purchased a copy of it and used it in our first lesson, I happened to be browsing through the selection of children’s books I purchased from book orders and received as gifts from my mother (my mom mails me random books to start building a collection for her “grandchildren” – eek scary thought!), I realized I already had the book. Maybe next time I should browse what’s on my shelf. I have a problem of going out to buy new “pretty” things and resources each time I have a project or a lesson to teach. I have to snap out of that habit, teacher salaries and budgets will not allow me to do this every time I want to teach a lesson…lesson learned: use available resources before spending money! Back to getting this book out of my head, we walked in today to teach our fourth lesson and Ms. A was using the book to teach a math lesson. I am glad my choice in literature was useful in another lesson.
Anyway, once again, I was nervous again because Jen was coming to observe, I wanted our lesson to be superior J Of course, Jen didn’t get to observe the whole time because our lesson started late. And of course, on the day that Jen comes to observe, we have our first problem with classroom management. Kids like games, but kids have a hard time calming down and paying attention to directions at times too…it turned out to be okay, but still a bit frustrating. Ms. A ended up stepping in to get the children calm, thank goodness.
Once again, I am definitely an advocate of using technology – YAY for it. We used the Smart Board to have the students manipulate between jobs that provided goods and jobs that provided services. This part of the activity went well and the students had calmed down from the earlier game chaos. It was still a bit of a struggle when helping children learn the difference between goods and services because as one child put it, they were convinced that something is a good “when you can hold it in your hands” – therefore, a policeman can’t be a good. I realized that I take certain learning for granted and explaining words that I can use in common conversation to a six year old is difficult.


Lesson #5 – 3/22/2007

It’s all over…I was sad to leave the students but today was our last lesson. The stress has been alleviated and no more planning…but now onto product creating and paper writing, the not so fun part! Stress was also alleviated to see how students participated in the final discussions about the unit, as well as looking at the final assessments. I think we were successful and the students were able to make connections between our lessons and what Ms. A was teaching when we weren’t there. One thing I would have liked to change would be to make the lessons more fluid so students could make connections between each lesson to see how they all connect to economics, as opposed to separate lessons. We pulled a few of the students into a small group to complete the assessment which also proved successful. This seems to be hard to do in a real classroom with just one teacher but Ms. A has herself, an assistant, and last semester, had a student teacher. With the addition of us and occasional parent volunteers, she has a real advantage.