Número Dos
Good news! I conquered another week! It was a lot more nerve-wracking, because this time I actually had to have a point to my lesson besides just playing Drama games. I also had my mentor coming to observe!
We started with reading "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" I picked it, because it makes the kids laugh, and they get to interact with the story on each page. Sure enough, all the kids at the end of each page were yelling "Noooo!" at the pigeon who wanted to drive the bus. I also find sitting the children down on the carpet for a book is a good way to calm them down, since they are coming straight in from recess for my lesson.
The next step was the activity. Ms. Merris expressed to me that she wanted to learn how to incorporate drama into literacy and math this semester. So this lesson I wanted to try and bridge literacy and drama. I tried to do this by having the children read two funny poems out of "Where the Sidewalk Ends". Instead of being boring and projecting the poem on the Smart Board and having the children read the poem, I came up with actions to go with the words of the poems. For example, the first line of "The Acrobat" says "I'll swing by my ankles". So the children make a swinging motion with their arms and then grab their ankles while choral reading the words. I specifically wanted a choral reading activity, because they are first graders and beginning readers. Choral reading helps beginning readers, because it scaffolds readers who may be struggling more. If words come up that a student doesn't know, then they can listen to the rest of their peers. What one cannot do on their own, becomes possible with a group.
We did both poems and I think the lesson as a whole went relatively well. There are a couple things I would change that my mentor suggested:
1.) Make sure the poems are not above the reading level of the children. I chose funny poems, but some words may have been too difficult.
2.) Incorporate the children more. I dominated the whole lesson by telling the children what each of the actions were going to be. I should have asked for suggestions from the students and incorporated them more.
