I got a bit of a shock this morning, a wake up call as a teacher. My 9th grade class and my 6th grade class went surprisingly well, and then I had the 1st graders.
I really enjoy my classes with little kids because anything that involves physical activity and making noise entertains them no end. If I can keep them entertained for an hour and nobody gets hurt, everybody is happy.
The problem is, I’m also supposed to be teaching them something. The class started well. Even before the class started, I was standing at the desk taking my props out of my bag, not even looking at them, when they started chanting ONE…TWO…THREE…FOUR…and they made it all the way up to 12 before they lost steam, one or two kids were like 13, 17, 15 but still I was really proud of them that they made it to twelve and it was totally unsolicited.
Then I ran them through about 15 minutes of TPR, head and shoulders, knees and toes, point to the window, point to the door, stuff like that and the class may have gone more smoothly if I’d stuck with that for the whole hour but I was worn out. The kids were still going strong, but I needed a bit of a breather.
So, I played a game I use even with pre-schoolers and it’s always a big hit. I shout out a color and they have to touch something which is that color. It lets them run all over the room, if one kid is wearing a green shirt and I shout out GREEN!, for instance, they get a lot of attention and there’s a lot of laughter. And they always get it right, and fast. That’s the downside of the game, it lasts about 5 minutes, tops.
So, I still had about 20 minutes of the class to go and I was ready to break out the flash cards and then I noticed a box of little, plush cubes of different colors, which the kids like to stack like blocks and also throw at each other. I picked up a red, a green, a blue, a yellow, a white and a black, held them behind my back and then pulled them out one by one and asked them to name the color.
When I asked the class in general, I got the right answers, but I noticed that there was a lot of hesitation and some kids weren’t speaking at all. So, I tried them one by one and realized they actually don’t know their colors. I guess when we’re playing the game, they just watch the smart kids and touch the color they touch.
So, I need to do more individual testing. And maybe I need to back up a bit.
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