Tuchek Reflection #2

My second lesson went really well and like I suspected, all four focus students had a lot of fun playing the Sound-Letter Knowledge Game while still learning at the same time. At first I was worried that they were going to assume that the game was going to be boring because as soon as students hear the words “game” and “learning” in the same sentence, they automatically write it off but this game turned out really well. J and E were matched up which left C and M together which was worked out perfectly since J and M are best friends and would spend the lesson goofing off instead of listening/learning. Some things that I noticed throughout my lesson, is that the partners bounced ideas off of each other which was one of the things I was looking for, and it was also a really good idea to have the two teams compare their categories/columns after they were down. This comparing between peers allowed the students to catch each other’s mistakes and then have them a) share their reasoning for why they put the word where they did and then b) fix their mistakes based on their peers’ suggests/strategies they personally used. There were only a few times that I had to step in when the teams were comparing their results, and it was when all four of them were stuck on the rhyming task. The three words that they couldn’t agree on were “mom”, “bon”, and “pom” so I had all four students say out loud each letter individually starting with “mom” and then “pom”. When they got to the “m” sound in both “mom” and “pom” I had them say it a few times and asked them to take note of where their tongue positioning was and how their lips were. I then asked them to say “bon” out loud saying each letter individually and to take note of where their tongue positioning was and how their lips were. All five of us then sat there and said the sound associated with “m” and then “n” and the students instantly felt and heard how the two letters sounded differently and took the word “bon” out of the “mom” and “pom” rhyming pair. Overall, as a teacher I learned that learning can be just as effective as a game as it can be as a lecture, presentation, or hands-on activity, just a little more fun! I also learned that in order to get to the core of a students’ problem or weak topic, you sometimes have to start at the very beginning to uncover the root of the issue.