When Things Don't Go As Planned

In case I've given you the impression that things always go as planned in my classes... let me set you straight.  I will you tell you the tale of two teachers presenting the "same" lesson.

I am blessed to have a wonderful colleague who teaches kindergarten and 1st grade. At the moment, the 1st and 2nd graders are working on  "A Healthy Life," a unit we're co-writing, and I'm working on with the 2nd graders.

We had a fun lesson planned working with a great authentic resource from Mexico--a children's video that focuses on healthy choices.  It's below.

My colleague's preparation before viewing the video with her class:

       

She also found a cute video clip that demonstrated "mover el esqueleto," and previewed some of the phrases the children would hear--priming the pump for them to work with the video.

Here's my preparation:

 I think you can see where this is going.

My colleague's students left understanding that eating foods of various colors and moving their bodies are part of a healthy lifestyle.  My group...well, did not make those connections as clearly.

Sometimes when I've found a resource I'm excited about, I give it short shrift--plowing through it energetically, but lose the opportunity to milk it for all it's worth.  While the children in my group enjoyed watching the video, they didn't make all of the connections to the unit I was hoping they would, and didn't have the chance to learn and use some new and possibly relevant language chunks/vocab. I went too fast.

After lessons like this, I remind myself that it's important to lay a good groundwork for authentic resources, give processing time, and then work the resource until we've rung it dry(and/or the kids lose interest).  It's not a race.  It's perfectly fine if the children spend several classes, doing a few different tasks on one resource, as long as they're still invested.  Working this way takes time, and it's OK(and worth it) to give it that time.

I've decided to be forgiving with myself and learn from my creative colleague for our next go round!