The Year 2 teacher engaged the children with a story about a naughty dinosaur who wandered from home and got into trouble. The story is pitched well at the children's interest levels, but in order to draw them in more, teacher Tan made simple masks to depict the characters in the story (the naughty young triceratops, the triceratops parent and the scary tyrannosaurus rex). The children used the masks to role play the story, and everyone enjoyed themselves.
Language Arts are meant to be fun and creative, and the children's creativity will often take them outside the lesson plan. This is a good thing! In Tan's class, the children cut out the story board in the activity book and folded the paper into a xylophone-shaped book; she also asked them to make a book cover. Most children were happy doing this, but some got distracted by the hole left on the page of their activity book and used the space to frame their own faces. On a very submerged level, the children are putting themselves inside books (the unit topic is story time); isn't this what we want in the language arts section of the unit? On the surface, these boys seem distracted and off topic, but deep down they are totally involved in the lesson. Teacher Tan did a good job letting these boys have the freedom to explore the topic for a few minutes in a way that interested them.
Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)
 |
| Filling the gaps. |
 |
| The T, Rex was very fierce. |
No comments:
Post a Comment