This week, the project was creating haunted houses in celebration of Halloween. Some students decorated their houses in other ways, so while the project was named "Haunted Houses" on the lesson plan, they ended up being holiday houses.
A few changes happened at the Mix that affected how we ended up executing this week. First, my partner was out on Monday, so I led the lesson and handled the classroom management for the most part with the assistance of another member of the team. The organization of the groups were changed so that on Monday, we had group 7, the oldest students in the mix, and group 1, the youngest. Tuesday was group 2. Wednesday was group 3 and group 4. Thursday was group 5 and group 6.
On Monday, group 7 was energetic, which made it difficult to get the students started. I managed to get them focused using the classroom point system, where the class gains or loses points towards candy at the end of class based on overall class behavior. After they learned what the project was, they were pretty self-sufficient. I aided in distributing more glue and monitored behavior. The second group was much more difficult. Being first-graders, they could not handle the hot glue guns alone and needed lots of individual attention. If we had more than half an hour for the project, I may have let them use regular glue instead, but they needed to be dry for the students to be able to take them home at the end of class. Behavior management was also much more difficult. A few students tried walking out of the room to go wash their hands. I had them sit back down, raise their hands, and ask properly before they were allowed to go. The support person I had been assigned walked the group down to the restroom while I kept an eye on the ones still working. It was a frustrating moment, but I made sure to explain to them that I need to know where they are in case of an emergency, and they can't walk out without asking anymore. They may not have understood me fully, but they quit walking out unannounced. The rest of the time in class went better and they went home happy and with a good dinner in their hands.
Completed houses the students hung on the wall by the door.
Wednesday, my partner was back. The students did well with the project and I didn't have any problems the whole day. I talked with each of the students about their houses and distributed coloring pages to those who finished. Both groups got a little too loud at some points, but when reminded of the correct volume, they quieted down to a more appropriate noise level. My partner had brought in a speaker to play music during the class, so we all had a blast singing along. I learned that even elementary students will sometimes ask for songs with swearing and topics that aren't school-appropriate. When playing songs for a class of students, always check the lyrics unless you know for sure that it is okay for students. I thought since groups 3 and 4 are still pretty young that they would mostly ask for kid-oriented songs. My partner looked up the songs we weren't sure about on her laptop before playing them. I'm glad we did!
Thursday, the students were told about the project and they weren't too enthusiastic about it. A few students wanted to do it, but most wanted to sew again, which surprised me. We did a different method of teaching than we have been doing. I taught the instructions on the house to the small group who wanted to do that project while my partner led the rest of the students in a sewing practice lesson. With the students broken up into two smaller groups, there was more noise as the students asked questions and talked amongst themselves at the same time. It went alright, though. One thing we could have done better is one of us could have taken the students we were teaching into the hall or into the empty classroom next door so that the noise level remained manageable and we didn't have to tell them to quiet down so often. Due to students getting to choose an activity they wanted to do, they were excited about the projects and had much more fun than if my partner and I had made them all do the houses, whether they wanted to or not. They still learned meaningful skills, even if it wasn't the intended project.
This week, there was a lot of learning in terms of working with different types of people as my partner and with various situations in terms of classroom management and decision-making. We tried a different method of instruction, and it worked well. We will probably use that split-group method again in the future.
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