Health Lesson

Thursday, February 18, 2010

I've been wanting to incorporate some sort of structured play into my lessons. In health, I am teaching a unit on nutrition. Today we were learning about the food pyramid and the different food groups. I had them do a game on the smartboard where they had to put different foods into their correct group. This simple game was so much fun for them that they wanted to play again and again. To add more play, tomorrow for my lesson I am going to split the class into three groups and then each group would be given pictures of different foods. On one side of the room there would be five baskets labeled with a food group. Each team would send one teammate at a time with one piece of food and they would have to speed walk and put the food in the correct basket. This would allow the students to be moving and doing some sort of fun competition. I see how much the children enjoy getting that little bit of movement, so I am excited to watch how the lesson turns out, and see how structured play will work.
Posted by annmazz at 3:08 PM 0 comments

Olympics

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Though there is not much play in my fifth grade classroom, I have been trying to incorporate it the best I can so that I can see the effect it has on the children. I have been doing a mini unit on the olympics the past two weeks. For our closing lesson I made our very own classroom olympics. Since it was just in our small classroom, I had to do activities that would be appropriate and quieter. We did a balloon between the knees relay, pass the tissue paper with a straw race, spoon on the nose race, and balloon between back relay. I couldn't believe how much fun the students had by just incorporating some physical play. The unit is now over, but they are still asking to do more with the olympics because they had so much fun, so that made me feel really good. I believe it is important to let the students have some sort of play or activity during the day so they are able to relax a little and refresh themselves instead of sitting in their desks all day in a serious tone. My goal is to keep incorporating activities and play based events like this one in my lessons.

Posted by annmazz at 3:24 PM 0 comments
Thursday, February 11, 2010

Recess

For my last three weeks in school I have noticed how much play at recess affects the children and their attitude as well as their further learning. My cooperating teacher has the children that do not finish homework or assignments stay in during recess. Most of the time it is the same kids who do not get assignments done, which means the same kids staying in for recess. I notice that not having that break for free play truly affects them. Many of them are so sick of sitting in their chair learning, that they are to frustrated or unfocused to learn anymore. This makes the recess time to get the assignment done unproductive. After recess is math, and many of the kids that don't finish their assignments and stay in for recess, are the ones that have trouble with their subjects (especially math). I have been working with these kids during math and they are so overwhelmed without the break that they get too frustrated to work or too unfocused to get anything done. There are many times where the students have actually said that they need recess to "get awake again." This small break allows them the opportunity to get away from academics and have free play.

Posted by annmazz at 2:37 PM