open class gettin close

Ok, so today it is thursday, and all the kids are going on a fieldtrip so I have to be at school, but I have no actual classes. So I thought I would start the day off by finishing up the two or three more blogs that I wanted to write. Today I wanted to talk to you a bit about my open class. We have been working on it for about 2 or 3 weeks now and finally this week we actually started doing that lesson with all the first graders (except for the ones that will have that lesson for open class) ..The first two times were really frustrating becuase there was an exercise that was just not working out, so after we changed it, it was much better. Now we are getting much more comfortable with the class and I feel like it is going a lot better. I am a bit nervous though, because of all the first grade classes, the one class that will do the open class is actually one of the lower level classes overall I feel. So I am nervous about how things will go and how quickly the kids will pick up the material

the topic for the open class by the way, is learning Cause and Effect and how to use "because" and "so" to show cause and effect. I think I got a pretty good lesson put together, but in the end how well the open class goes will depend on how good the kids are, if they participate or not, and if they pick up on the materials. Just in case, I kinda bribed them and told them that if they are especially good on that day everyone will get a candy the following week. That usually does the trick. But I guess im gonna have to wait and see.

I must say though, we are doing our open class different from what everyone else does in that the class that the other schools see will be the first lesson for that group. Let me explain a bit more....

so usually, teachers freak out about open class and want it to be just perfect. As I said, it is supposed to be the perfect example of a class. So pretty much what everyone does is practice that same lesson with the kids of that class so that when actually when teachers see the open class for the kids, it is the second time doing that lesson and so they already know what they are going to talk about, they have already learned the materials (somewhat) , they already know the answers to the worksheets, etc etc etc.... yeah you are probably thinking, what's the point??!??! I agree... I mean, a class should reflect how class usually runs I mean... what do you really do the EXACT SAME lesson with the same group twice! Anyways.... so my co-teacher and I decided we were not gonna do that. So the kids will have that lesson for the first time on that day and thats it. So yeah... just hope all goes well.