Lesson 2


One feat of the day was that I was able to memorize each student's name! We did a name game where we pretended we were packing our bag to go on a vacation together. We voted on the location and picked Japan. (This wasn't actually important for the game itself but made it a little more fun for the kids from the get-go.) Each student had to pick something to pack for our trip but it had to be an alliteration with their name. We brainstormed at first and helped each other think of a few items that we could pack that started with the same sound as our name. The last element we added was rhythm. We patted our knees and clapped to keep a steady (more or less) beat. I demonstrated "My name's Mrs. Anderson, I'm packing an apple" in rhythm to which they responded "Her name's Mrs. Anderson, she's packing an apple" in rhythm - after a few tries of course! We went around and many of the kids were able to speak in rhythm but it posed a challenge for others. It was a good thing we had thought about items in advance so they could focus on the delivery and not trying to think of a word on the spot. I could feel the difference in closeness with the students after I had had a personal interaction with each of them by saying their silly item and more importantly their name.

The next part of the class focused on the learning target "I can write a narrative text with real or imagined experiences." We listened to March of the Lions from Carnival of the Animals and wrote a story together. We listened to the music several times and I had the students try to write down ideas or draw pictures of potential stories the music could be telling. We ended up combining several students' ideas resulting in a story of a boy trying to break into a castle to get into a quinceanera party he had not been invited to. The castle was guarded by a dragon and so he used his pet cat to distract him. He had to climb up a shaky ladder but eventually made it into the window where the story ended with him seeing the beautiful quinceanera princess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE4CATvZ188&list=PL5EDDC3CD0593C9E0

I had the students break up into groups to write this story in their own words. They were free to make variations from the class's version of the story.
*Classroom management thing 1 I learned is that when you're dealing with 4th graders it is best to put them into groups yourself. I didn't expect that having them pick their own groups would be so chaotic.
Classroom management thing 2 I learned is that I should have given them a very specific amount of time to work on their stories in their groups. Had I been more specific and given them a proper count down/warning at the end of their time limit I think that we may have been able to let each group present. We ran out of time (and I lost track of time!) and they went to recess a little late, which I felt bad about. Lesson learned!

When the students presented some of them were very excited and really got into it. One group finished before the rest and was eager to share. They had time to draw several visuals while they read their story. They took pride in their trick ending when the quinceanera princess said "ew!" and rejected the boy. Another group had a very animated narrator. I played the music as she read with dramatic inflection and used her body language to make it extra interesting.

I loved seeing the imagination and excitement in some of the students eyes during this story writing process. Some of them were naturals at it! They had really great intuition about what implications the music had for what was happening, as if it were a movie score.