Throughout my special education student teaching placement, I had to create a culture for learning within this Autistic Support classroom. My students could only remain focused on a lesson for short periods of times. This meant the instruction that I gave needed to be engaging, hands-on (when possible), and convey the information I needed to teach simultaneously. The majority of the class was made up of visual learners. I found that anchor charts helped students to organize and visualize the information. These charts also provided visual reminders of the information discussed throughout a unit. One of the Science units I taught was about animal classification. I created animal anchor charts for each group of vertebrates. As we read through the textbook, the students would explain to me some of the characteristics found in each group and I recorded them on the anchor chart. The students were able to refer back to these charts throughout the unit. It also served as a visual reminder of one animal example found in each of the different groups. Many of my students were able to remember the names of these groups because of these visuals. They also got my students excited to learn about each of the different animal groups.
Another tool I found to be beneficial to creating a classroom culture of learning was doing demonstrations. These were especially useful in Science. During our unit on Food Chains and Food Webs, I did a demonstration on water pollution. Pollution is one way food chains and food webs can be impacted. I demonstrated for the students how hard it is to get rid of water pollution once it has been polluted. The students had so much fun removing the trash and attempting to filter the water. This hands-on activity also got students thinking about other ways scientists could solve these problems. They also were able to think more critically about how pollution affects food chains because this demonstration gave them a back board to bounce off of prior to our discussion.
One final tool I used was movement in the classroom. I tried to get students up and moving whenever possible. I had students act out "Vertebrate vs. Invertebrate Charades." Each student got an animal card to act out and then the class had to guess if that animal was a vertebrate or an invertebrate. We also played "Scoot." This game has students switching desks and solving a problem at each desk. I used this to teach students to identify cause and effect. The student would get a cause and effect example and then have to decide if the underlined portion was the cause or the effect. The students enjoyed getting up and moving. This also kept students engaged and excited about the content they were learning.
All of these tools helped me to keep students excited about learning and engaged in each lesson. The students came to school excited to learn and try new things, which made teaching the content fun and easier because the class was excited to learn.
Another tool I found to be beneficial to creating a classroom culture of learning was doing demonstrations. These were especially useful in Science. During our unit on Food Chains and Food Webs, I did a demonstration on water pollution. Pollution is one way food chains and food webs can be impacted. I demonstrated for the students how hard it is to get rid of water pollution once it has been polluted. The students had so much fun removing the trash and attempting to filter the water. This hands-on activity also got students thinking about other ways scientists could solve these problems. They also were able to think more critically about how pollution affects food chains because this demonstration gave them a back board to bounce off of prior to our discussion.
One final tool I used was movement in the classroom. I tried to get students up and moving whenever possible. I had students act out "Vertebrate vs. Invertebrate Charades." Each student got an animal card to act out and then the class had to guess if that animal was a vertebrate or an invertebrate. We also played "Scoot." This game has students switching desks and solving a problem at each desk. I used this to teach students to identify cause and effect. The student would get a cause and effect example and then have to decide if the underlined portion was the cause or the effect. The students enjoyed getting up and moving. This also kept students engaged and excited about the content they were learning.
All of these tools helped me to keep students excited about learning and engaged in each lesson. The students came to school excited to learn and try new things, which made teaching the content fun and easier because the class was excited to learn.
cause_or_effect_scoot_cards.docx | |
File Size: | 68 kb |
File Type: | docx |
scoot_board.docx | |
File Size: | 242 kb |
File Type: | docx |