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VIDEO LESSON - FABLES
I gave a lesson on Fables to my 3rd graders as part of a larger unit on the various genres. As you can see from the fable video, I introduced Fables and placed them within the context of all the different kinds of literature, comparing fables to what the students had already experienced (poetry, biography, nonfiction and fiction). I defined a fable as a story with a moral usually involving animal characters. The bulk of the lesson involved having the students take turns participating in a readers' theater of the fable "The Tortoise and the Hare: "
I was well-pleased with the outcome. Students who had been too shy to participate before got inspired and animated. Yet at the same time, the class was responsive to my nonverbal and verbal cues for order and staying focused on the task at hand.
The video also shows them dividing into small groups to work on the next phase, which was to write their own dialog using a worksheet called "Point of View" . They were to imagine what Hare and Tortoise might say to one another after the race and write it done in a Play-type format. This activity also went very well and the students produced some engaging and entertaining dialogs.
I noticed a dampening of enthusiasm when I seemed to admonish them about the way they were performing a certain section and I realized how sensitive they are, and how easy it is to give up and decide "Oh, I'm no good at this" if they don't get it right away. Another one of my long term classroom goals would be to encourage studnts to try, that it doesn't matter if you don't get it perfect the first time, that learning and growing may involved sucessive tries, and that is OK..
One thing which is also evident on the video is the dismay of several children who didn't choose a group right away, or get in the group they wanted to. It all sorted itself out in a few minutes, but it made me realize tht I still need to work on my methods for dividing children into groups. Self-selected groups often aren't the best. And in keeping with one of my larger classsroom goals - to build a sense of community, I would want to have the kids work together with lots of different people, not just the same ones all the time.
In both of my student teaching experiences, I realized the fine line between encouraging the children's individual creativity in skits, plays, presentations to the whole class and maintaining an orderly quiet classroom which is easy to achieve with individual seat work.
My assessment included worksheets on various aspects of Asoep's fables and noting the students' participation in group activities.