Pancakes Anyone?🥞

This week students and staff celebrated Shrove Tuesday by eating pancakes in the gymnasium that were kindly prepared by parent volunteers. The teacher shared a clever song that related to their celebration. You can see in the photo where students have circled certain words in the song. These are words that were recognized because the students have previously learned about them. In my placement I have been taught the importance of identifying words children may know while reading to them. It was clear to see that each child felt a sense of accomplishment after they had successfully spotted a word they had learned before. 

This week the teacher added two new activities to the students’ centers. One was about displaying numbers on a chart using toy creatures. This allowed the children to visualize the values assigned to the numbers they landed on using a spinner. The students were excited to show me the other new activity. One student would hide a pompom under a cup while the other student was not looking. Then, the student would open their eyes and guess which cup the pompom was under. The trick is that the child would have to say the word that was spelled out on the cup before the leader would lift the cup. This added a sense of excitement when the child finally got the word correct. Making learning fun is critical for keeping young children engaged. I already knew this was the case before coming into my placement, but now I’ve had the chance to see first-hand how it can be difficult to develop teaching techniques that meet children’s short attention spans. I’ve also noticed that some children require more help getting and staying involved in classroom activities. Therefore the required support must be present in the classroom. This helps in ensuring every child meets the learning goals of their grade level.