Boys and Girls, You Are... Different...

As soon as I got to the class on the 17th, I knew something exciting was going on. It was picture day! There just had to be a reason some of the boys were wearing ties, I know they didn't volunteer to do that :)

After they had all gone to capture their smiling faces and I had graded some history assignments, Mrs. Barnum had them start making posters on some of the explorers that they had been discussing. They broke up into groups to look at where they each explored and how significant their exploration was to America. I was able to help a couple of different groups in each rotation, and there was something really obvious: the boys didn't want to work and the girls did :)

This didn't surprise me entirely, but the boys were so talkative, and the girls were just trying to encourage them to help work on the posters. Some of the boys got hung up on how one of the explorers had been eaten by cannibals, and I don't think that the girls were too excited to listen to that. I could tell that the girls were enjoying being able to find what they were looking for about the explorer in a paper about them, and they made their posters look nice.

 

 

I went back to the class on the 24th, and graded some more spelling tests. This weeks bonus word was exploration, which I thought was fitting. These are the best ways that they misspelled it:

• exploreation
• explortion
• exploreashin
• explorashon

After grading the spelling tests, I listened to Kristen read a book about the first meeting between a Native American tribe and European explorers called Encounter by Jane Yolen. She had them each take the point of view of either an explorer or a Native American, and write what their thoughts would be if they were there.

 

I've loved being able to see how they learn about when America was discovered, and how they are making connections between all of the events. History is one of my favorite subjects and it's fun to relearn all of these things with these students.

 



My Fisrt Day of Elementary School... in 7 Years

I was able to volunteer in my dear cousin Kristen Barnum's 5th grade class at an elementary school in Provo. It was refreshing to be back in that atmosphere, where the students aren't so concerned about getting ready for college or starting a career.

 

This class had about 30ish students, and I know that the way they learn is different from each. So as Mrs. Barnum was teaching her social studies rotations, she used some of each learning modality to inform the children about early European explorers, and to, hopefully, help it stick.

 

For the lesson, she had a power point with pictures and words printed on the screen for visual learners, she had them take notes for the kinesthetic learners, and talked through the slides for those who are auditory learners. She also is going to have them each do a poster on one of the explorers that they talked about, like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, and Amerigo Vespucci, so they can further understand them.

When they had extra time, to get all of the jitters out of them, Kristen had the students play four corners, although instead of numbering the corners, she gave each of them a direction: northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest, so they could learn the directions. I think this helped each of the students, regardless of learning style preferences, because they were all involved in this activity and all seemed to enjoy it. They probably didn't think they were learning anything from this activity, but they had to think about each of the corners and what corner they were in, and I believed that they did remember the directions by the end of the game.   

Kristen did a good job of keep the attentions of each of the kids, and catering to their needs in the ways that they learned. For recess, if they hadn't had their parents sign their planner saying that they checked their homework, they had to stay in for recess. If they had missing homework assignments, they had to stay in for 10 minutes to work on their assignment. This is a great incentive for each child to get their homework done on time, since they want their recess time, and so they can show their parents what they are learning in school.

This was a really fun first experience. The first thing that I did was to grade spelling tests. They had a bonus spelling word: patriot. A lot of them were able to spell it, but not all. Some of the ways that they misspelled it were very simple, common mistakes, but some were very entertaining. Some of them go as follows:

• patret
• patrot
• paitreate
• paytreit
• patreiete

I remember how I could never get the bonus words on my spelling tests, so I know how this goes, sounding out the words, thinking what vowels could make the sound in what word.

I am excited to go back and help even more! I hope that I can watch the students progress as they gain this education.