Thursday there was definitely a wocket in my pocket, things were a little different and very silly. This was because my school adviser was away at a workshop and there was a teacher on call in and me of course. What made things extra tricky was the fact that it was an indoor/outdoor recess meaning the classes had a choice of staying inside or going outside as it was raining. It became ever more apparent to me that physical activity whether it be DPA, recess or brain breaks is 100% necessary for the success for both my students and I. Following recess the class was easily distracted and struggled to listen and follow instructions. I definitely had to take a few deep breathes and reevaluate certain situations and the way I phrased things to the class. The TOC was lots of fun to work with and had some great tips to offer me throughout the day when I was teaching. It was difficult for her to communicate with the class at certain times as she did not know many of their names did not know the students as well as I do. This meant I was often the one who got the classes attention and prepared them for transitions, it was nice to have the responsibility even though it was challenging at times. One thing I will be trying next week is a new attention grabbing rhyme, chant or pattern to get the classes attention as I found myself relying on my voice throughout the day and I would like that to change.

After lunch I taught a poetry lesson, overall it went well and the class had established a general understanding of rhyme which is the main characteristic of couplet poetry. The aspects of the lesson that went well was the fact that it was more student focused and less teacher directed, the class would have not been able to listen to me teach for longer than ten minutes. I also had to adapt my lesson to include more brain breaks and movement for the class as the carpet time was challenging for many students. I read the Dr.Seuss story There’s a WOCKET in my POCKET and it made the class giggle and offered them an opportunity to really think about rhyming and more generally words and sounds. While reading and listening to the class’s observations, questions and connections I realized that poetry and Dr. Suess’s stories are lots of fun to read and listen to but more importantly they allow students to play with words and sounds and begin to see the beauty that lies within language. And this idea can be summed up beautifully by the words of W.H Auden, “A poet is before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language”.  In the future weeks I will be teaching the class poetry I hope to build on this idea of the beauty of language and help the class see this beauty present in their own poetry.