Today while in the field, I had to do a practice lesson for the edTPA. For part of my class, we needed to create a short ELA lesson and record ourselves teaching it. I decided to focus on the standard RF.K.1: Demonstrate understanding of the basic features of print. Focusing more so on having the students understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
Even though I am in a first grade classroom, the majority of my students are at a kindergarten level. So most of the lessons I do will be from kindergarten standards.
I have noticed since September that my students had a hard time adding spaces in between words when they write. I wanted to focus my lesson on the importance of why we need spacing to help improve their writing. I remembered when I was in high school and observed a Kindergarten classroom, the teacher used Popsicle sticks, and referred to them as Spacemen, to help them with spacing. I loved this idea and wanted to utilize it for my lesson.
Our amazing Technology Resource Center had cute Popsicle sticks shaped like people and I used those so my students could decorate them.
I started my lesson by asking my students if they knew why it is important to have spacing in between words (verbal learners). Next, I drew two sentences on the board: One with spacing and one without. I then pronounced the sentence with spacing normally and the sentence without spacing as one big long word. I followed up by asking students which sentence seemed correct and why (visual learners).
I told the students we would be practicing spacing by finishing this fall phrase by choosing between three sentences that I made.
We are focusing on copying down sentences from the board and keeping letters and punctuation grounded (on the line and not floating in the air).
I then introduced them to our helpful friends: Spaceman and Spacewoman
I told them they were going to use them to help with adding spacing in between their words. I informed them again that they were going to choose between one of the three sentences and copy it down on their paper.
I modeled how they were going to use the spaceman by choosing the first sentence and writing it down on the fall packet and putting my spaceman in between each word. I also emphasized how my letters were staying grounded and weren't floating in the air. When I got to the end of the sentence, I made sure to point out how my period goes right next to the last letter of the word and stays "on the ground".
Finally, I had the students go to their seats so they could practice spacing with their new spaceman/spacewoman! (Hands-on learners)
After they were done and got their work checked, they were able to decorate their spacewo(man).
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