Thankful for Thanksgiving This was the second lesson that I did with my students, based on Thanksgiving, and did I learn a lot from this lesson. First I started off with reading a few books on Thanksgiving, and gave the students a little history background about the Pilgrims and the Indians. Then I also read a book “Thankful for Thanksgiving” that was a really good book that listed things that people can be thankful for. The reason that I really liked this book was because it didn’t list only things that were materialistic, or only tangible items. This book gave reasons like: family, love, visits to grandma and grandpa’s house, jump around on the leaves, etc. After the book, I had students pair-share and talk to their neighbor about things that they were thankful for. Then I brought the class back together and we made a list of what we were thankful for. While we were creating our list, a lot of students were saying that they were thankful for their toys, but weren’t really getting the “picture” of having to be grateful for a house and family around. While this was happening, I was thinking that, for next time, I would want to print pictures of: 1) Children that don’t have a home, clothes, shoes and/or parents. 2) Homeless people who live on the street. 3) Large families that have to fit into a small living space, and so forth. I think that if I were to show the students pictures like this, it may make them become more aware of the world around them, and hopefully they will realize that they are lucky to have the things around them.
After the lesson, the fun part begins! I announced to the class that we were going to make “Thankful Turkeys” for Thanksgiving. We were going to trace our hands and then cut it out to make our turkey. Then students were to come back to the round table to collect their 4 feathers to name what they were thankful for. This is where I wish I made a more structure worksheet. Students were having difficulty with tracing their hands, for some of them were putting their dominant hand down, and then tracing with their non-dominant hand. Then, some students were just writing on the fingers, and did not come to collect their feathers. It was getting so out of hand that I just had to stop their art in the middle, because it was just chaotic. It was time to start cleaning up for lunch anyways, so I told students we would work on something a little different the next day. My colleague then shared with me her template for her “Thankful Turkey,” and I really like how she had everything on one worksheet. (The students are used to doing worksheets everyday, so in the end, It would have been easier for students to grasp directions if they were doing a worksheet instead.) The next day I went over the new “Thankful Turkey” and it went MUCH more smoothly. I just had students color it with crayons, and they pasted it to colored paper and drew in a background if they had time. Through this lesson, students practiced their fine motor skill, and I had them use “Fall” colors while coloring in the background and feathers of the turkey. I feel that this lesson was student centered because students were given a choice to write what they were thankful for, and the different colors of what they could color their feathers in with. Another thing of what I really liked about Britney’s worksheet is that there were 6 feathers, so I would tell students to strive for 6, especially the ones that finish first with doing the bare minimum all the time. The students that I know struggle with their work, I would just cross out their |