Lesson Presentation
Today I got my first taste of actual teaching! I planned a lesson and taught it to a group of 26 fourth graders. Thanks so much to Mrs. Yeager for letting me teach her class! Overall, it went really well.
I grabbed their attention by just signing at the start. There was one little boy at the front who realized I said “hi” and said “hi” back to me. I started talking and asked (by show of hands) if they knew what I just did. A lot of them did, and the little girl I called on said, “sign language.” I then signed and spoke my little introduction, “Hi class, my name is Sharon. I’m here today to teach you the abcs.” I then asked if any of them knew the sign language alphabet already. Again, a number of hands went up. I had the alphabet up on this blog and had it pulled up on the classroom’s interactive TV. We went through the alphabet together twice with the first time being relatively detailed instructions. There was one little girl who asked about double letters (her name is Emma) and if there was a special way to sign those. I wish I had thought about this! It was such a great question that I wish I had looked over it on purpose (next time I will). There is a way to treat double letters in words.
After going through the second time together, the kids naturally started practicing on their own and in their groups of four. When I announced that this was, in fact, what we were doing next, there was a wonderful quiet that spread across the room. They really only needed a few minutes to practice, but I walked around correcting small mistakes.
Before their “assessment,” we came back together as a class and tried the whole introduction. We signed together “my name” and each signed our own names.
I found a “fingerseek” worksheet that I passed out next. The students worked on this while I went around to each student so he or she could practice. If they spelled their name correctly, I said their name correctly out loud. This was the assessment and might be a fun thing to do at the beginning of the year to learn my students’ names.
The only thing I would have done better was to track my time. I forgot to look at the clock when I began so I don’t really know how long we took.