Classroom Experience Reflection on Oct. 15

I had a good experience in my second grade classroom today. I got to do the morning work with the students and Brett and I both gave our whole class lessons. Mine was on Antonyms. I was told by the teacher that the students did not have prior experience on the topic but most of them did quite well. I introduced the activitiy through giving the defition, giving examples, having students do examples, playing a game, and then doing a worksheet for assessment.

While I didn't expect the lesson to take very long to begin with, I still felt like it was kind of short. Even with that fact, I felt that it went really well. The kids responided really well to my choice of activity choice. I should have been a little clearer about what to do with the pairs once they were found, but other than that, it was fine. The kids seemed to once in a while switch up synonyms with antonyms, but they still did a great job.

Some changes that I will consider doing in the future if i choose to do this activity again is 1) having clearer directions as to what to do with the pairs, 2) going over the worksheet together as a class rather than having them doing it individually, 3)providing more examples and possibly having student create some activities their self [that could even be an activity in itself- students come up with movement representing synonyms, creating poster boards representing synonyms], etc. I think that I would also choose to have the activity done in smaller groups like 3 or even 2. Maybe students could even create a story or song that have antonyms used in it. If it were in the older grades, I would use the "I have ____, Who has ____?" that i learned from Ashley Davis. You can use it with a number of topic or subject areas.

It was a good day and I took stuff away from it for me to consider in the future! Always learning!