Getting to Know Our Students!

Getting to Know Our Students

Today was our first day of fieldwork and we spent our day getting to know our fourth grade fieldwork students! Me and my fieldwork group worked long and hard to figure out what activity we should do with the students in order to get to know them, have them be engaged, and pre-assess their knowledge on weather and water. Before we even got to the classroom, my entire class put together a pre-assessment test for the class to take. This included questions about gardening, weather and water, light, soil, and much more. Even though this was a "test," it was not graded. It was for us to see what the students know or don't know. Students usually complain when they have to answer questions or take a test but this class was great! They were so cooperative and answered every question to the best of their ability. If they didn't know an answer, we told them that it was okay for them to write "I don't know." This was our time to figure out what exactly we need to focus on in our lessons in order to have the class succeed. The students took the pre-assessment on a Google Forums and completed it on their class iPads so technology worked to their benefit! They definitely stayed more engaged on the iPad and were interested in the questions they had to answer. Even though this took up majority of the class time, we still had a little time left to get to know our students! The students were broken up into four groups and rotated their way to each fieldwork group to get to us know us, and also complete a fun activity/game! 

My group and I planned to have two activities: a tree of knowledge poster and play the game of Jenga with getting to know you/weather and water questions on the pieces. We didn't have time to complete our tree of knowledge poster, so we will be planning to use that during our lesson, so stay tuned for an explanation on what that poster is about! :) Our second activity planned was Jenga. Jenga is a game where wooden blocks are stacked up extremely high and each person has to pull out their block but try to stay away from having the whole tower fall down. My fieldwork group and I wrote down questions on the Jenga pieces that were "getting to know you" questions like, "What is your proudest moment?, Do you have any pets?, What's your favorite subject?" etc. And for the pieces we left blank, we had the students answer a question about weather and water that we provided for them like, "What is your favorite season and why?, Can you name one stage of the water cycle?, What is Evaporation?" etc. The students really enjoyed answering personal/pre-assessment questions. Even though some of the questions they didn't know the answer to, they really enjoyed playing the game of Jenga. We all introduced ourselves and got to know each other a little bit before each round but overall, this was a great way to get to know our fieldwork students! We hope that our students enjoyed our activity the most and that it was beneficial to themselves as well to us!