April 11th

The teacher announced that the students would be working with clay today. She immediately wrote down the supplies that each student would need to collect on the board. She dismissed them by male and female to avoid crowds, which works well. I did not dismiss them separately during my lesson, but have learned that I need to in the future. Once all of the supplies were collected, the teacher was ready to give a demonstration. She showed the students how to decide when the clay needs water added to it and when it needs to be dried out. She went through wedging, explained how to properly use tools, and showed them how to make slabs. Once everyone had made their own slab, she took them step-by-step through the process of making joints with the slip and score process. I walked around and helped students keep up with the activity and steps. I filled containers of water and helped cut clay for students as well. I like her strategy of taking the students through the process step-by-step. It requires them to participate in the hands-on activity. I will absolutely use this in my own classroom. The one problem with this strategy is that some students cannot keep up and it is difficult to tell if a student has fallen behind. One person in charge of thirty-or-so students can be demanding and many things can be missed. When I am there to help the students work and keep up, it seems to go well, but it would be difficult to teach this way alone. When the students do fall behind, they get defeated. A good way to solve the students from falling behind is to have them raise their hands when they have finished a step so that the teacher knows when it is appropriate to continue. Although, this would be more time consuming. Overall, the students had a rewarding day of experimenting with clay.