Teaching Our Unit, Day 3 (3/22/07)

Today, we taught a very ambitious lesson. Being that our economics objective was for the students to learn that people make choices because they cannot have everything they want, we wanted them to interact with the material. We wanted them to actually make choices in order to learn that they indeed cannot have everything they want. We taught together this time. So we started the lesson off with a discussion about personal experiences, scarcity, wants, needs, and money. We had the students fill out a decision tree in which they listed the pros and cons of a specific choice for their own classroom (if given the opportunity for a new addition to their room, would they rather adopt a class pet or a candy machine?). Based on the list they created, they voted in order to make a cooperative decision (they'd rather have the pet, even if it involves a lot of care and work).

Next came the ambitious part. We set up a game in which 21 children were split between 7 groups. They each had 12 "dollars" to spend on a variety of items (we printed pictures on slips of paper and designated each a certain cost). They would take turns picking items and gluing them and the amount of dollars the item cost onto a prepared sheet of paper. We had a color card system to randomize the order so that students ideally would not argue, though of course they were angry if they were chosen last anyway. We really did try. Also, we had the students glue their items and money down so they would grasp the idea that once a choice was made, it could not be taken back. Through this, they should learn that we must evaluate our choices and make planned decisions.

WELL, it was a bit chaotic. Making seven groups of kids was our first mistake. It was really hard to monitor every group and help when children forgot directions, or had not paid attention in the first place. From my point of view, I saw that about half of the children really understood and benefited from the game. However, a full half did not and this was a problem. But looking back on it, Kelly and I spent a lot of time thinking through the logistics of the game and we thought it sounded pretty solid. Thus, these problems were things that I feel we could not have really learned unless we actually tried a game like this. Even though my initial reaction was disappointment in the chaos, I do not regret doing the activity at all. We are learning as teachers and we have a long way to go. Many things will only come with experience. So following are some things I learned from our lesson today.

First of all, we should have constructed fewer groups. As Jen reminded us in our post-ob, three is a bad number with children because it inevitably singles out one child as an outsider. Also, we as teachers really need to be able to monitor the children for them to get a valuable experience. Perhaps we could have tried with two groups. In that case, we would need to have an activity for the children to be involved in while they were not making a choice from the items. For instance, they could be reflecting in writing about their classmates' choices. Or they could serve as a "discussion panel" to remind classmates of the pros and cons they should be considering in each choice or to offer their own opinions in the choice-making. Another thought for the future would be to elicit help from parent volunteers. If we were as the permanent classroom teachers, we would have the ability to write letters home and explain the activity, asking that some parents come to help. In our classroom observations, we have already seen multiple families come in for visits to do crafts or read-alouds with the children. The parents DO want to be involved and we could have used them to help individual groups.

Another issue was the language we used in our lesson. Because Jen came to observe, we were able to have this outsiders' perspective on our explanation of concepts. For example, Kelly used the phrase "weighing" pros and cons to make decisions. This conception of weight is too advanced for most first graders and therefore not an adequate instructional tool. Also, we were sometimes inconsistent, using "pros and cons" and "good things and bad things." If we were going to introduce the more advanced language, we should have made sure to explain it sufficiently and to be consistent with its use. A suggestion from Jen was to script out our lessons so that we would be made more aware of our audience and the way we need to talk to students.

We also learned a little more about forming groups. Based on our experience with the children, we tried to group them so that there would be one successful student paired with one of our discipline problems in almost each group. In our minds, we were trying to balance students so that they could learn from each other, and our exceptional students could help with clarifying directions. However, I realized that this really puts the more advanced students in a difficult position. It's not necessarily fair to make them almost substitute teachers. We should be thinking about their learning as well. I haven't quite come up with a solution for this yet or decided how I would do it next time. This and the other things I've discussed are topics that may come up again and again, and we need to strive to learn from past experiences. I trust that even though this lesson went a little less well than planned, we will learn to smooth out our lessons over time.