(A) Students Completing Listening Activity

(B) Grouping Students

(C) Students Brainstorming and Answering Questions

On the week of September 10-16, we worked on the activity titled, Can We Talk. On the first day I decided to discuss with my students the importance of getting along with one another. I tried to explain that our classroom is just practice for the real world and that people in the real world must cooperate with one another just like they must do in the classroom.

The first step in getting along is understanding how to communicate. I explained to my students that the most of the time people who don’t get along do not because they do not know how to communicate. I asked students if they knew what I meant when I said communicate. My students immediately said that it means to talk. Then they gave me so many ways people communicate which I wrote on the board and we created a web out of their responses. After the creation of the web, I focused the students’ attention back to the main word of our web “communicate”. I told my students that when you communicate you have to know how to listen. Then I asked the students do they know how to listen, of course all of them said that they knew how. I told them not answer so quickly because we were going to do an activity and after I wanted them to tell me if they still thought that they knew how to listen. So we did a listening activity that asked students to do different things to a piece of paper. Not one student got all of the directions correct. After the activity I asked student again do they know how to listen and many of them said they did not. So I told students that we were going to work on how to listen the next couple of days. At the end of the activity I explain the incentive chart title,’ I Caught You’. The purpose of this activity is to give students a visual of people helping and getting along with one another. A student may witness a person helping or getting along and they may give another person a sticker or I may give the stickers out. This activity will go on for six weeks and the person who has the most stickers will get a treat.

The next couple of days we discussed the activity called Can We Talk. I explain to the students that they will work with a partner and create a comparison poster. They must use their communication skills to complete the poster. Before we get started we had to figure out how we were going to get into groups. First I took suggestions and wrote them all down and had the students vote. Then we made tally marks to discover how we were going to group the students. We ended up with a tie, so we voted again. The suggestion that won was picking names out of a bag. So I picked names out of the bag and group the students.

On September 16, students got with their partner and brainstorm five questions they wanted to ask the other and recorded the answers. While students were with their partner I walked around observing and reminding students of their communication skills. I told students to remember that communication is not only talking, but also listening to the other person.
After the week was over, I reevaluated my calendar and discovered that I did not get everything done that was scheduled. We still needed to take pictures, create the comparison poster, and present to the rest of the class. So hopeful next week we can get those things completed. I can say that this week was very successful and I am looking forward to next week.