LI Day 6

jkljkl dfd fdfd I had my first teaching struggle today. I was taking pairs of students out into the hallway to play a memory game (aka concentration) using snowflakes that had words and their contractions written on them. For example, one snowflake would say "could not" and the student would have to find the snowflake that said "couldn't". The first two groups that I played with did fairly well. After a little review, they remembered the lesson and knew what pairs to look for. They became competitive and wanted to get the right answers so that they could win the game. When I worked with the last pair of students, one of the girls really struggled. I explained the game in the same way I had before and we started to play. I don't think that she understood the concept of the game, much less what contractions are. She would draw from the same spot everytime and couldn't find the matches. The other girl was getting matches left and right, in fact, she got every match in the game. The girl who struggled got none! I struggled because I did not really know how to explain contractions. This was the first time that I really was at a loss of words. I simply could not teach her what I needed too. I know that I have not taken any pedagogy classes, but I had hoped that simple things like this would come easier to me. The girl really was at a loss because I could not teach her. She was frustrated because she was not getting any pairs and she was confused because she didn't know what was a pair and what wasn't. After the other girl won the game, I sent her back to the classroom. I decided to put out half of the cards and play the game again with the girl who struggled. This seemed to help because she actually got pairs and was reading and matching the words. I still feel bad about not being able to teach her though. The rest of the day that girl followed me around and always came to me with questions. She also came and asked me when we would get to play the snowflake game again.

The rest of the day was great. I realized how much power the kids have from an experience I had today. I did not get much sleep last night and I had my first big test in psychology today. So when I woke up, I knew it was going to be a bad day. I was exhausted from no sleep and wondering when I was going to find time to do all the studying I needed to. I was worried about going to Kennedy with this bad mood and I hoped that I would have enough energy to work with the 1st graders. I just didn't want Mrs.Hausmann to be mad at me! But the school day went by so fast and so well! It wasn't until I was signing myself out in the office and I looked at the time, that I remembered that I was having a bad day and that I had a test to study for. The 1st graders just brightened my whole day and after the morning with them, I had energy to study, to do well on my test and to be in a good mood!