Light bulb!

September 27th, 2010

Well today was definitely a little difficult because we just came back from a one week vacation...all of the teachers and students were noticeably tired...we all had "a case of the Mondays," (thanks Office Space). However, I was very proud of myself because I thought like a teacher and offered a great idea for the classroom lesson. The Monday before our holiday break (September 20th) my co-teacher and I were planning for today's lesson which is called "It's cold." There is a portion of the lesson designated for a game but the game provided in the book is very bland and quite frankly...well, boring. So she asked that I think of another activity/game that the kids can partake in with a little more excitement. There is a website that a lot of foreign teachers use for ideas called waygook.org; this website is great for sharing ideas with other foreign teachers that are teaching the same lessons. I visited this site to get some ideas but didn't really like any of the games. At the last minute I thought it would be great to use a variation of the "pin the tail on the donkey" game that most of us are familiar with. My co-teacher had never heard of this game so I explained the basics and showed her a demonstration. Instead of a donkey we would utilize the picture of the girl in the text book, enlarge the picture and have articles of clothing that needed to be 'pinned' on the girl. There was a sweater, pants, gloves, and shoes. The class would be divided into two teams and one person from each team would have to be blindfolded, turn around three times, and try their best to pin the selected article of clothing on the girl. One person at a time will attempt and whoever is the closest to the correct spot wins/get's one point. So, today we tested my idea and it worked so well! The kids really got into it and really enjoyed it. We divided each class by boys and girls. Although it got pretty loud at times...it was a major success and I have to say, I was very proud of myself. I'm starting to think like a teacher :)