Behind the Scenes on the Lesson Plan....

Ian sorting crayons into containers for my 15 cherubs.....

I've had my last English Club hour last week.  I'll admit, part of  me was relieved.   Ian was such a great helper to me in the last weeks, though.  Not only did he step up to help with the assembly-line at home, but he gave me much-needed tactical support ;-) in the classroom.

The second group was soooo different from the first one -- even though they are all second-graders, things that worked like MAGIC with the first group, sometimes went.....flat.....with this last group. 

For example, we had one class about "taste" and I used an idea straight out of my KOW curriculum books:  tasting each individual ingredient that goes into cake and then eating the cake as a whole. 

Running to the sink after tasting baking powder.....those girls laughed the whole way.

The first group of children so totally GOT the point (= regardless of how we individually get along, when we work together as a group, it makes a wonderful thing...)   I could almost see the divine string of light bulbs going on simultaneously over those little heads.  It was an "Aha!" moment-extraordinaire. 

Second group, with the same lesson plan:   not so much.  It didn't help that half the class thought the cupcakes tasted icky. 

Icky Cupcakes:   frosting gone & half-eaten.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which, by the way, dumped me into complete food insecurity, and I had to be re-assured several times over by my family that the cupcakes tasted good.  

The whole thing was an odd contrast.  The only two lesson plans universally well-received by both classrooms were erupting the volcanoes and the mystery touch boxes:

Just messy enough to be thrilling.....

The sticky toy wins as #1 Mystery Touch Item, in case anyone is interested.... :-)

The other thing that both classes liked -- and this surprised me -- was reading in English.  Reading from the Bible in English.  

Mark 12:30-31

This made me happy, of course :-)...but those words are big and complicated and have lots of syllables.   Even though I had to stand behind the reader and pronounce each word out loud, they lined up to read in English. 

I have to hand it to those kids, after all -- they may not like to eat cake, but they don't mind tackling phrases like "equally important" and words like "neighbor" -- that's certainly worth a little culinary humility on my part, I figure. 

And school is out for summer now...... :-)