Journal #12

I think that this Children's Literature Project was a really good idea although, I wish that we would have had a little bit more time... Sometimes I felt like people were a little rushed to get everything they wanted done. I really enjoyed working with me group. I think that we each had great ideas and all tried to contribute as much as we could to the group. However, I believe that the groups were a little bit to big to have everyone equally present the lesson. My group chose to do the Grouchy Ladybug because we saw the number of different animals present in the book and therefore believed that it would be great to get all the kids involved. We then tried to think about the different concepts and skills that we could teach the children and I think that we had many wonderful ideas. We decided that as a music concept we would teach dynamics because that went side by side with the different sizes of the animals and which would present louder or softer noises. For a non music concept we wanted to teach the children about respect and friendship because during 2ND grade is a very crucial period for them to start making impressions of other people and we really wanted the children to start understanding the concept of "Treat everyone how you would like to be treated." When looking at the skills we wanted the children to understand how to play the different instruments and understanding which animals they belonged to as well as being able to identify the different animals. We tried to make this story and lesson as interesting as possible and that was when we found a little clock in the story that was on each page. We decided that we could incorporate this into the lesson by reviewing time in the beginning and having a giant clock that as the story was being read students could come up and change the clock to the time that was being talked about. I think that one of our biggest challenges were really just choosing just one thing to teach the kids about because there was just so much that we could teach from this book. Another challenge that we had was trying to make sure that everyone had an equal part in the lesson plan. That was why when I was making the lesson plan I tried to split it up for everyone to have something to do even having two people read the story, another person assigning instruments, etc. Like I said before I think that we worked really well as a group because we all wanted to succeed and each had good ideas to contribute to the group. For me I think the most exciting part is going to be when we actually present the lesson plan just to see how the students related to it. We have yet to present the lesson plan so I just hope that it will go really great and people will like the ideas that we have. However, I also hope that we will get feed back on how to improve our lesson plan. Nevertheless, I think that students really benefit from these types of experiences by being able to just get creative with many different things that can bring a story to life for the kids. Many children learn when they actually work with their hands and I think that even though this music is not a necessity, it really helps to connect it to those students. Students like to have fun and if we as teachers provide them with that comfortable environment then hopefully we will see that creativity come to life.