Today during observations in the New Paltz Middle School, Taylor and I saw our first "A" day. The big project throughout the day was the sixth grade self portrait collages. Each student needed to create a self portrait incorporating multiple images for a person in the center and words that describe their personality as a border. Throughout the day there were three sixth grade classes, Mrs. Sturgis taught the first class and then allowed Taylor and I to take the reigns for the next two periods.
Jumping into the lesson on the spot was not that hard after watching Mrs. Sturgis do it. The classes respected us greatly and acted as they would if Mrs. Sturgis were teaching.
I found this great trick for the cleanup process for this grade while teaching these two classes. Adding a little competition to their day made for a quick cleanup. When the first table was clear and the students at it were sitting quietly, I deemed them first place! After I announced this to the class, they all quickly picked up their pace and rushed back to their seats with quiet mouths! Worked like a charm. For a 5 minute cleanup, all students were in their chairs after just 3 minutes.
That's a great clean-up tip! Not sure if that would work on my high schoolers, but for student teaching ill be sure to try that out with my elementary students! How did their portraits come out?
ReplyDeleteThanks Gina! I agree, I don't think it would get high schoolers too motivated. Maybe if every week they received a prize for coming in first the most? They sometimes like end results. They actually finished those portraits up today (Day 4) and they look great! some students really tried to make themselves look funky and "weird," others stayed more conservative with the collage. All in all though, they came out great! Very interesting project I might enjoy doing with my students some day.
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