Week 5--Folk tales From Around the World

Lately I have noticed this class as a whole has had some problems listening when either me or Mrs. Larsen is speaking and I wanted to find a more imaginative way to help the kids know they need to listen so they can get instructions.

I found some great ideas in a book called "Creating Meaning Through Literature and the Arts; An Integration Resource for Classroom Teachers." It gave the idea to have students listen to grass grow or to the clock tick. It also suggested having a call-and-response phrase. The kids already know the "[Teacher] 1-2-3, eyes on me. [Students] 1-2, eyes on you" call and response and I needed something quicker, so I came up with "[Teacher] Tick! [students] Tock!"

That worked very well, and we'll see if it stuck next week. 

We then located ourselves and on a map and I showed the class the places on the map where the next two stories were from (China and the Philippines). I split the class into two groups (the classic 1-2-1-2 way) and then I had Mrs. Larsen choose two narrators, one from each group (to ensure that they would be able to read the story).

Each group got a story from another country. One was "The Empty Pot" by Demi.

And the other was "A Crocodile's Tale" by Jose and Ariane Aruego.

We had the students read the stories and then create a short performance for the class. Originally my idea was to have them perform it so the class would be able to hear two different stories from different parts of the world, but I underestimated the time that it really took. 

However, I am always amazed at how creative these kids are. They have incredible imaginations!

Having those big groups made it very hard to act out the story when coordinating so many kids in such a short amount of time. I also found that having the student narrators were tricky because they were unsure of when to keep telling the story and when to stop to let me work with the kids.

I was also very grateful to have Becky Wallin there to observe what I did and give me pointers afterwards. She pointed out that my overall objective needed to be more clear and present in the whole lesson. Part of my objective was to have them work on their own fairytales that they are writing (although we didn't actually have time in the end to do it) and that weakened the overall objective. I needed to focus more on the theme (folk tales from different countries) for my objective and let the kids write their stories during their writer's workshop time.

I'm also going to incorporate more theatre core concepts into the curriculum. It's a tough balance to get the core curriculum in there AND weave them together with drama concepts.

I'm starting to really understand the life of a teacher. Woof.