First Lesson!

The first lesson is always the hardest to teach, in my experience so far. It's difficult to know how engaged the children will be, how to get back in the swing of adapting to the children's needs, etc. Friday morning (March 16th) was our first lesson and I think it actually went pretty well for a first lesson! Maybe I'm blind to the mistakes we made, but the students seemed to stay pretty focused and the instructor commended us on our work!

The lesson began with me leading an interactive reading of Caps For Sale, a book about a man who sells caps and then when he falls asleep, monkeys steal his caps. Normally, a reader would not think of economics in relation to this book, but I thought it was a great introduction for Kindergarteners into the world of money and exchange of goods for money. The students really enjoyed the book, imitating the monkeys and their little motions and sound effects "tsz, tsz, tsz" and they seemed to be able to answer questions about why the peddler in the book needed to sell his caps.
Next, Lorena introduced the activity section where students had paper tickets with toys on them, labeled with their prices, and each student also had cut out papers displaying the 4 coins. In a simple way, each student could buy two items, turn in their money to the helper at their station, check off the box on their worksheet, and at the end, check off the boxes for coins they had remaining. This was really adapted to our particular class because some students knew exactly how much money they had spent and how much they had left, but some students did not know the value of the coins and so they could at least identify which coins they had left.

The biggest uh-oh of the whole lesson was the wrap-up. We completely forgot to tie it all together at the end, which I know is key to student understanding. OOPS! I hope next time we'll get it right. Lesson #2 comes tomorrow...