Earlier this week I was assigned to work with First Graders as a "Guest Teacher". After I wrote my name on the board with a mnemonic that "Mr. Morgan plays the organ," the students reverted to the use of "Teacher" for any adult in the room. The apologetic teacher left me with a stack of six worksheets while she attended a three hour workshop presented by a Pearson Learning representative training the teachers to use SuccessMaker.
As the students entered the room, after their lunch, they all went to sit on the rug. I met them with a short stack of picture books to read to them but was assaulted with raised hands and personal stories that were remotely associated with words that they heard in the story. They also had to show me the gaps in their mouths where baby teeth were being replaced with permanent teeth. One tooth came out during the brief time I was there and so I had to find a plastic bag to preserve the precious item.
Knowing that Guest Teachers (aka substitute teachers) were not allowed access to the ceiling mounted projectors connected to the Internet, I had brought along my own laptop computer, with Pre-Keys lessons using Microsoft Office PowerPoint. I had also brought along my six feet wide vinyl computer keyboard with color coded background for left and right hand numbers and letters. These I set up on the kidney shaped reading table at the side of the room. Before opening the laptop computer, and after I had distributed and explained the first worksheet, I began inviting students over to the reading table.
The first activity was to invite the students to "slap or poke" the numbers from 1 to 9 across the top of the vinyl keyboard. Every student had a turn, but were instructed to use the left hand for numbers 1 through 5 and the right hand for numbers 6 through 9. When we got to 0 I encouraged them to use both hands as they touched 1 with the left hand and 0 with the right hand in order to make the two-digit numeral 10. It was quite a stretch for them but most managed it. A variation of this might be to have one student act as the left hand and another as the right hand, working in cooperation. This activity aligns with the Core Curriculum Concept of numbers in sequence. It also aligns with left and right hand identification. In addition, it aligns with reading and writing from left to right and from top to bottom. Of course, it is a precursor activity to actually typing numbers on the computer keyboard (not just pointing and clicking).
After the first rotation of students, and having distributed the next two worksheets, I opened the laptop computer (during recess) and had the slideshow playing in a continuous loop. Numerals matching those on the vinyl laptop (just the numbers, without the Shift key options for ! @ # $ % ... ) came flying in, if they were left handed shapes then they entered the screen from the left. If they were right handed shapes then they entered from the right. After the numbers, lower case letters on lily pads began entering the screen. Students seated at the table had time to find and poke the matching shapes on the vinyl keyboard that they saw on the screen before the software advanced to the next shape. For some students that were faster than others, I simply pressed the space bar on the laptop to advance to the next shape. Students who picked up on that began pressing the vinyl spacebar after each letter that they typed.
At the end of the day I received hugs or high fives from students who exclaimed at how much fun they had had. Another learning center variation might have been to print (on paper) and laminate the shapes for students to match on the vinyl pad. Those shapes might then be grouped for a Scrabble style activity where students form words from their weekly vocabulary list using specific groups of letters. More on that with the fifth graders.
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