lessons

Yesterday I taught a subtraction lesson based around the song "Five Little Speckled Frogs." I taught the kids the song and printed off these cute little frogs and a log to provide a visual as we sang.

(Frog and log props can be found here.)

When we go to the last line of the song that says "Now there are ____ speckled frogs" I would wait for the students to call out how many frogs were remaining. I would periodically stop the song to talk about how many frogs we took away and how many are left. They're just learning the subtraction basics right now, so there's no equations and they have not been introduced to the term "subtraction" yet. 

Following our song I put students in groups for learning centers. My mentor teacher worked with one group on language while I worked with another on math. I created this worksheet to go along with the lesson.

(Find it here.)

Students were asked to draw a picture of frogs on a log then draw arrows to indicate how many jumped into the pool. They then had to fill in the blanks to indicate how the song would go if it were about their picture.

I thought the lesson went really well. The kids were engaged and eager to participate in the song. They were creative with their drawings and demonstrated understanding of the topic by explaining the numbers they wrote and comparing these numbers to their drawings. My mentor teacher also loved the lesson; her and the assistant said it went very well.

The person observing my lesson had a long list of suggestions, which frustrated me at first. I normally take constructive criticism very well but I've been experiencing low self-esteem about my ability to teach. In reality, he was just trying to help me and he had a ton of great ideas. I just want to be perfect for my students and when I'm not I feel like a failure. I think what I need to try to understand is that I will never be perfect, but I should always strive for perfection.

Anyway, I still think the lesson went well. Later in the day I taught a vocabulary review lesson where we played a game "Students vs. Teacher." I found it on this website, which has a ton of great ideas for word review games. It's such a simple game, but very effective in keeping students under control. I showed the kids pictures of English vocabulary they have learned. If they raised their hands quietly, I called on one of them and they answered correctly they got a point. If they spoke out of turn or didn't raise their hands, I got a point. You wouldn't believe how silent the classroom became. Then they won and I let them do a little bit of cheering to celebrate :)