Earth Day Bulletin Board 4-16-12

This is the EARTH DAY bulletin board!! It came out GREAT!! Yohanna (my partner) and I discussed what we wanted the board to look like and also how we would incorporate the students Arts and Crafts. We made the tree out of tissue paper and everything was a cut out. At the beginning Yohanna and I, had two totally different ideas on what we wanted the bulletin board to look like. But in order to complete it, we compromised and as you'll see, it came out BEAUTIFUL! Our plan for the bulletin board was to have each student decorate a flower and write a promise that they would share with their families and do at home. (ex. I promise to turn off the lights when im not using it.) I thought this was a great experience with working with a partner and sharing different ideas.

Lesson Plan Review (Have you filled a bucket today?)

WOW! That's all I could say after my partner (Jennifer) and I finished our lesson. The whole time we were super stressed out, but we supported each other throughout the lesson and did a great job. We started planning our lesson a day at a time trying to get things settled and together. What we didn't realize was that our due date was sooner than we thought. In two days we changed our lesson and invested a lot of time and work. We had to make sure everything was a perfect as can be. We were so prepared that even if a part of the lesson didn't work out we would still have a back up. We assessed our lesson by grading the worksheet and formatively assessing the scenarios that the students acted out. I thought we did a very good job in discussing kind words and being a "Bucket-filler" rather than being a "Bucket-dipper". There were parts that we forgot out of our lesson plan. For instance, we were suppose to hand out a crossword puzzle to the students while we were handing out their buckets. Overall, I felt really proud of what we did as a team. I thought our lesson was great and we hit every part of the six language arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and visually representing.) I thought that was a PLUS! From the reviews that we received, everyone liked our lesson and thought it was really well planned out. But few students said that our behavior methods could have been a little bit stricter. In my opinion, dealing with 1st graders, you can only be but so strict. Yelling or constantly reprimanding a student is not going to help that student learn. Don't get me wrong some students need reprimanding, but letting the student know that they will be missing out on the fun part of the lesson will get them to stop their behavior for that time being. Something that we could have improved was the amount of activities we had planned for the students to do. It was a little much. But overall I wouldn't change much. My partner and I WORKED VERY WELL together and had LOTS of FUN teaching!