Final Day in the Classroom!

Last Day Working with the Students!

Friday was my last day teaching the second grade class, with my group. Though I was relieved that all the stress of lesson planning and preparing to teach was over, I was sad that it was over. Being the third and final day most of my nerves were gone. I was ready to get up in front of the class and teach them our cooperative learning lesson. We would be wrapping up on the topic of goods and services in the community. Our lesson really brought together a lot of the ideas that we had been teaching in our previous lessons. For this lesson students would be taking on a lot of the work. They had groups, jobs, and task that needed to be accomplished by the end of the class. 

Like our previous lesson we did a review of goods and services. We briefly had students talk among themselves about these words and what they meant and where they see them in their community. We then went to every group and had them share what they came up with. I definitely think that this took too much time. We could have easily asked each group to share one idea and then moved on. 

Activity 

For our final lesson with the students we really wanted them to tie in everything that they learned. To do this we had each group create there own communities. Before having students take control we went over somethings. We wanted to make it clear to the students that they would have to work well in their groups and get along. In order to do this we had to make it clear that all students within their groups need specific jobs. We listed the jobs on the board and also gave each group a list of the jobs. We gave students the freedom to chose their own jobs because this is important when it comes to working as a team. Along with a list of jobs, each group also had a paper with suggestions of things that should/could be in a community. 

We used an alien Voki to really catch the attention of the students. The alien shared a message with the students. He needed help creating a community and learning how to make a community work. Students were eager to help and began filling in a packet with the different things that would be in their communities. Students had to compromise and reach agreements in order to create successful communities. Each community was only allowed to have fourteen buildings, so this was a challenge for some groups. Once the whole group agreed on the buildings they wanted, they were then free to color and arrange the buildings in their community. 

To finish the activity, our professor Dr. Smirnova went to each group and asked about their communities. She asked the students why they chose certain buildings, the name of their community, and how they worked in their group. Students were then rewarded a certificate for their hare work. 

Overall I was very happy with the way this lesson turned out. Students knew exactly what needed to be done. They also worked very well in their groups, it was great to see them compromising in order to get their communities set up. The only thing that I would have changed was shortening our introduction. This lesson does require a good amount of time and towards the end I did feel like my group and the students had to rush to finish. I had a great time working with second grade!