Mini-lesson Experience & Teaching Aid

Sorry for the really late post; I thought I pressed the publish button before I left class.
     I had fun today in class, because it was full of exciting presentations. In the beginning of class, Rhea and I did our little performance from a play we did in a previous semester. Reenacting the scene from our play has taught me that dramatic play is one of the important aspects in teaching children to read. Dramatic play allows children to discover the need to read when they have to recognize words to play the situation (i.e. reading a skit).
     After our performance, Amanda did a read-aloud on a book called Chika Chika Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambalt. Amanda did an amazing job in reading several pages of the book. It was awesome how she had expressions while reading the book, because it engaged us in the story.
     When Amanda was done with her read-aloud, we got into groups and continued our mini-lessons. My group consisted of Kelsey and Amanda. I enjoyed Amanda's mini-lesson, because she made it fun and engaged us throughout the lesson. I liked how she transitioned the two stories that she read to us to introducing adjectives. I thought that was a good idea to introduce students to adjectives, because adjectives play an important part of a story. I also liked how she explained to us that without adjectives, the story would be plain and boring and we will not be able to imagine a picture in our mind. The ending of Amanda’s mini-lesson was a good technique in teaching students how to use adjectives in a sentence. She wrote several adjective words on the board and Kelsey and I had to make up a sentence using those words. Overall, I think Amanda did an excellent job on her mini-lesson.
     After Amanda’s mini-lesson, it was my turn. I was nervous at first, because I thought my lesson was going to be too short or too long. But when I was done and heard positive feedback from Amanda and Kelsey about my mini-lesson, I felt a little better. It was fun doing my mini-lesson on teaching vocabulary, because as a future educator it is important that I know several strategies to teach and engage my students in learning vocabulary words.
     Once everyone was done presenting their mini-lesson Rachel, Rhea, and Jessilyn presented their teaching aid. I liked how Rachel created different types of bookmark buddies for her teaching aid. It was a clever idea, because students can actually write on the bookmark if they need help in a certain area or write notes (i.e. a story’s setting, plot, characters, etc.). Rhea’s teaching aid was very creative and cost-efficient. She made an ABC wipe-out book with a binder, sheet protectors, and worksheets.  Jessilyn’s teaching aid was called “fiddle sticks” and I thought that was a good idea to teach children sight words. All three ladies did an amazing job with their teaching aid. Their teaching aid was very creative and cost-efficient.