One More Thing to Add

As school has now ended and the children have learned all they could in the classroom that they were in, I went into my last day of observing in "No Name Elementary". I was very positive and optomistic heading into classroom 21. I had asked the teacher ahead of time if she was ok with me bringing in a game for the children to play. I made a game the week before, going off of the online game called "word-whomp". You get six letters and have to make every word possible that is 3 letters or more. The whole word counts as twice as much. I knew that the children would want to play a game. They would beg me every week, "Ms. Maria, please bring in a game! We want to play with you!" So I figured, ok, this is safe enough, and brought it in. As excited as the children were, they couldn't sit still. Think was a strategic game. One that required you to think outside of the box.
While some children were going through the cards as fast as lightening, others were discouraged and started to talk to one another instead. Yelling, screaming, laughing, squirming. I thought to myself, "Oh man Maria, you can't handle this." So instead of letting the teacher talk to the students and tell them to quiet down, I used a technique to get them to do that on my own. It was something I learned in high school when I went to the elementary school in my own town. I would say very quietly, "If you can hear me, clap your hands once". One child clapped his hands...Again..."If you can hear me, clap your hands twice." Now a few more joined in. "If you can hear me clap your hands four times." By this time, the rest of the children realized something was going on and they stopped what they were doing because they were curious. That is something that will never leave children, their curiosity. "If you can hear me say Woot Woot!" They all were saying Woot Woot.

At that time I realized that even after all that time of putting the game together, and all of my hard work, the kids were curious about a quiet exericise that I had done off the top of my head. Children are the same when it comes to this. They want to know what's going on, and you don't need to try hard to impress them and to make an awesome game. All you have to do is be excited about what you're doing. When you're excited, they will get excited also. When you surround yourself with positive people, they in turn become positive also. It is the same idea. When you are excited about teaching, the children will be excited about learning. I believe all teachers should keep this in mind when teaching their own classroom.

It's just something I wanted to share.
Thank's you guys.
Have an amazing summer.

Maria