Last Teaching Day - Resources & Review

Christen and I came together to teach the last lesson of the unit. It was nice being back together to finish up, since we had been teaching separately for the rest of the unit. Our last class we taught had been exactly a week ago, so it was nice to see the kids again, too.

We covered resources, recycling, and renewal to finish up on content. The students then broke into groups to do a "trash bag sort." This entailed each group of third-graders picking through trash bags that Christen and I had put together. Their job was to sort through and pick out items that could be recycled and those that couldn't - they recorded their answers on a worksheet. If they were unsure of an item, they could put it down the middle on the line or put it on one side or the other and provide an explanation. The kids seemed to really enjoy going through all the garbage and had some great conversations and pulled in personal experiences ("My mom recycles these!"). However, at the end when reviewing the answers, we were unsure where to put some items. Some items could be recycled, but they had to be taken to a special recycling center (ex - batteries, computers, etc.). After going through the answers I realized I had some questions of my own. I should have done more research to show them where they can recycle certain items locally.

After the recycling sort, we moved to review for the upcoming test. We played a Jeopardy game to help with the review. The kids knew most of the answers and we went over the ones that they were unsure of. At the end of the class, we handed out a review worksheet for them to work on to help them study.

This was the lesson Jen observed. During our post-ob we talked about the power of language. Christen and I both realized that we needed to use more explicit language when giving the students directions in order to make sure they do the task and also that they understand it. It was something that I had not given much thought to because we didn't have any behavioral issues in the class, but it was an eye-opener to see how it could potentially backfire to be vague. We have been told to exercise our teaching voice by using them on our friends and boyfriend (hubby in Christen's case).