Lesson #2 - Turkey Cookies

We taught our second lesson to our first grade class on Tuesday. This lesson went well overall. We gave each student materials on a plate, and read directions to them step by step to make a "turkey cookie." We also had the steps written out on a board for them to look at if they chose to. After they completed their cookies, they were allowed to eat them, so we had a little break. Then, we started the rest of the activity. I read them a list of instructions to make the cookies that were out of order from what they had done. They were quick to tell me that they were not correct. The students were given a copy of what I was reading. They then cut out the steps, put them in the correct order, and glued them to a worksheet we had given them. Overall, this went well, and the kids were of course excited to get a chocolatey snack! I was happy to see that they really understood the concept of having steps sequenced and the importance of doing this.
All of the students were able to put the steps back into order, but many of them did need help reading the list. We had initially wanted the students to write a list, but we decided that too many of them would not be able to do that, so we switched to the cutting activity. While we tried our best to make the instructions easy to read, some of the words were unknown for the kids. We had 4 teachers in the room to walk around and help, so this was okay, but we did talk about the lesson afterwards and came up with a few ideas to change the lesson to be on a more independent level for the kids. Including a picture prompt seems to be the easiest way to make the words more accessible. Francine actually did this with one of the children, and it seemed to work well. I think that if I were to do this lesson again, I would include some pictures or color coding to help the students read the list. This activity was fun to do with food, but also could be done with paper or other craft materials.
Another thing I did with the students who had trouble reading was to talk through the steps with them. Since this was not a reading lesson, but rather a lesson on sequencing, I did not want to focus too much on the reading. If the student was able to tell me what the next step was, I felt that they were successful, so I would help them find the piece that said the step. Again, since there were many helpers in the class, this was okay to do, but would be difficult if I had to do this on my own.
Overall, this lesson went well, but again, there are things I would change for next time in a first grade class.