Today was my first official day back at Sunnyside Elementary after Christmas Break. It was so wonderful to be back. During my time away from the class, I found myself wondering about the students and what they were all up to on their winter break. It was great to come back and have many of the students excited to tell me about all the various things they did while on their vacations.
Today the short lesson that I taught the class was DPA. Since the weather was nice, I decided to take the kids outside to play a game of capture the flag. I am beginning to notice each time I teach a DPA lesson that it is more organized than the last time I taught it. Reflecting on my weekly DPA lessons has allowed me to think about what I could have done differently to minimize problems that sometimes occur, keep the lesson more organized, and to make sure I am giving more individual attention to students who appear to be struggling with the instructions or the activity.
Todays game of capture the flag went really well. Several minutes in advance I asked two of the students within the classroom to retrieve all of the equipment from the gym and to take it to the field outside and set it up. Ahead of time, I also made sure that Ayla (who cannot play on the field because of her wheelchair) had chosen a couple of friends to play an alternative activity with her on the upper playground. Additionally, I remembered to ask students to put on their jackets before lining up to go outside, which made getting ready to go outside and start playing the game much more time efficient. As I establish my presence as a teacher more and more within the classroom, I notice that the students are beginning to get used to me as a teacher and understand my expectations during various activities, like today during the DPA lesson. All of the students properly followed my instructions about where to meet, how to create the teams, the rules of the game, and when to clean up after the game was over.
One question that emerged for me today during my DPA lesson was how to deal with conflicting information from students. For example, in the game today one student claimed another cheated and that they were tagged out while the other student claimed they did not cheat and were not tagged. In an event like this, where I did not see the particular event occur, how should I deal with it? It was difficult for me to know what to do in this situation without feeling like I was taking sides. Luckily for me, a similar situation happened about 30 seconds later to the other team, so I was able to defuse the situation by pointing out that the two events had evened themselves out.
Overall, my first day back was awesome. Throughout the day I continued to take on small roles within the classroom helping out with a variety of activities. I took attendance twice, brought the students in at the beginning of the day, after recess, and after lunch, helped a small group of students with math, and circulated around the classroom helping different groups of students work on their Health and Career Education Planning projects.
Re: conflicting information from students.
This can be difficult to handle in the minute when you have a class going on and have to make a quick decision. Depending on how serious you can put the discussion aside to another time or if serious, you may have to have the students write something out and then have a discussion when they have done that and had a chance to reflect a bit. Another way is to have them discuss (again depends on the student, level of incident) and have an agreed on story which they can tell you when they agree with the story.