Today was an interesting day to say the least. I was so excited to see the scholars, especially since I had not seen them for two weeks, only to find out that half of the classroom was absent due to one positive COVID case. There were only twelve students out of the twenty two that are usually in the classroom and I must say that I did miss having everyone there. Although there were less student in the room, the classroom routines remain unchanged, in fact they went just a bit faster because there are less students going to the bathroom, and less time spent lining up to transition to other activities.
I was able to work with two students today on adding two digit numbers. I was happy to see that after the 20 minutes of this lesson that I was able to see a little growth in the students' knowledge. One thing that I noticed working with these two girls is that even though they are two of the lower performers for this subject, I still had to differentiate the instruction between the two of them. One of the girls needed a lot more visual modeling. I used the whiteboard with her and had her try to follow my directions step by step so that she was able to get the repetition that was needed to complete the math problems and eventually be able to complete the problems on her own. It was exciting to help the girls and give them a couple tips that they could use in their future.
Towards the end of the day I taught my first literacy lesson on perspective. I was restless the night before thinking of all the things I wanted to make sure that I covered in my lesson. I woke up out of my sleep at three o'clock in the morning and started entering notes in my phone that I didn't want to forget for my lesson. The funny thing is, I didn't feel nervous at all but, I mind was racing with thoughts and I just had to write them down. Parts of the lesson when really well and then I believe with it being the end of a long day the students were getting a bit board and that is something I was not expecting. Starting with the positive, I started the lesson with optical illusion pictures to demonstrate the idea of perspective. I showed a total of three photos and had the students tell me what they saw in the picture. I made sure to tell them that there was not wrong answer so that they were comfortable answering confidently. The students loved this activity and you should have seen the look on their faces when they saw the other hidden picture. I even did something as simple has having two students standing face to face and putting a printed six in the middle of them and having them tell me what number they saw. I feel that this was the perfect intro to my lesson. I also think that the book that I choose by Anthony Browne Voices in the Park was an excellent book to have as a read aloud. This book looks at a day in the park of two families, from four different perspective. The author of the book is also the illustrator and his pictures and creative imagery gives this book life. There are so many things to infer from the pictures and so many different tiny details to discover while reading. I enjoyed getting the students away from their desk and setting with me in a semicircle so that we were able to have an intimate discussion on the book. This was another area that worked well to have less students in the room.
Overall the day was good, I hope that after the break all the students will be back in the classroom. I'm already thinking about my last literacy lesson and how to make it a bit more exciting for the students because it will take place at the same time of day.
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