Fourth Journal

In fifth grade, this week we worked on the third session of my innovation plan. This session was focused on developing students’ artistic skills through the story “The Gingerbread Man”. The objectives of this session were, first, students would make in a creative way the settings and characters of the story using recyclable materials. And second, make an oral presentation showing their creation.

In this class, students had to work in groups, this represented a challenge for me because when they make cooperative work they talk too much all the time, so the atmosphere in the classroom was very heavy. Art and craft in the classroom is very engaging because students enjoy using different materials than the usual ones. However, make art and craft activities in groups is hard work since students do not agree in many aspects.

Besides, another problem in this session was again the time. Students spent all the time (2 hours) making the settings and the characters, they ever had to take them for homework. The presentation was impossible to carried out because students did not finish the

Thus, what I would change from this session would be the time for the activities and also the way the groups are conformed. So, they could work more effectively.

The classes I taught in third grade aimed to reinforce the vocabulary about different vegetables. The activities in these classes were active and make students pronounce the vegetables well. They were very involved since I took some real and plastic vegetables to the class so they could enjoy a lot when they worked with touchy objects more than pictures. Also, they really enjoy the song about the vegetables, they asked me to repeat many times, and they sing really aloud. There was an activity that I change at the last moment because I consider the second activity they will enjoy more and everybody would have the chance to participate. So, instead of prepare a vegetable soap, they blindfold their eyes, and took one vegetable and guess what its name was. Besides, they enjoy doing a worksheet because they had to color and they told in the beginning that they love drawing and coloring.

In conclusion, I think is good to make some changes if they are for students to need to find a way to improve the classroom management, I still have to work on the noise in the classroom since this kind of activities allow students talk too much. On the other hand, the use of images and videos in the classroom have been really useful tools to reinforce the vocabulary of the lesson.