Guest Posted January 12, 2009 Share Posted January 12, 2009 Hi, I haven't written on here before so hope this works ok!!!! I'm being observed on Friday doing a literacy group time lesson (on carpet) with my Reception class of 30. I have a TA and can split for parts if we need to. We are doing a topic on penguins and this week looking at the book 'The Emperors Egg'. From being observed before, my feedback is often that not all children are participating and my lessons don't have enough pace. I do find it hard engaging all 30 children for a carpet (group time activity). I can pick objectives of my choice, for example, discuss the features of a story book. But obvioulsy for this observation it needs to be an exciting objective and have lots of practical stuff that they will all be doing but I am stuck for ideas on how to do this! I find Maths easier as you can split into 2 groups and do things like bingo games, ordering number cards etc but find literacy a little harder. I will have a phonics element which will be fine but then a little stuck for a main idea so would really appreciate any ideas anybody has! Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HappyMaz Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Welcome to the Forum 1983lauren! It was lovely to talk to you in chat earlier! Congratulations on making your first post - hopefully the first of many! I can't help because I'm in pre-school but I'm sure that tomorrow there will be plenty of people with lots of ideas to help. Maz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmajess Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 A great way to keep all the children involved in literacy sessions is to have chatty partners - to ask a question to the whole class and instead of having hands up, get them all to talk to their chatty partner about it - think, pair, share - then share some pairs' ideas with the rest of the class. If the children will be familiar with the whole book by Friday, you could ask them to discuss what they have found out about penguins from the book. What was the funniest thing they found out? Were there any yucky bits? (like when the mum comes back and is sick in the baby's mouth!) What were their favourite parts and why? Then write it up - could use the opportunity to teach features of a list - 'Things we have learnt about penguins'. You could have a powerpoint set of slides with scanned in pictures from the book / photocopys of pictures if you don't have an interactive whiteboard and get the children to think of super sentences together to describe what is happening in the picture. What is happening here? (think, pair, share) How could we make that sentence even better? What WOW words / sparkly words / special words could we use to describe how the penguin is sliding (etc). Or you could have a penguin quiz - 2 teams - what can they remember from the book? And then emphasise the objective about using non-fiction books to find out information. You could read a fiction book about penguins - eg Penguin Small (but it's quite long) and compare it to Emperor's Egg - how are fiction and non-fiction books different? Not sure if this is much help, just off the top of my head - I'm supposed to be doing my planning for next week and it's so much nicer thinking about someone else's! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emmajess Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 PS And welcome to the forum!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Thankyou, you've given me some nice ideas. I really like the idea of the quiz, the kids like things like that if I hype it up! Just looking forward to getting the observation out of the way! Just need to get myself organised now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hali Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 hello and welcome to the forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cait Posted January 13, 2009 Share Posted January 13, 2009 Welcome to the forum, sounds like you've had some great advice aleady! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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