No, that’s not Wilbur nor is that Uncle next to him. Friday’s trip to Phuket Zoo was the perfect way to finish my teaching in P4 for Term 1. While the classes for Yellow, Red, and Star were “business as usual,” P4/Green had their lesson during the field trip as we tried to find the various animals mentioned in Charlotte’s Web. It was great fun!
If you’re a parent, you might be wondering about now why I’m writing about the end of Term 1. After all, it’s only the beginning of Week 18. We have two full weeks of school left until the final exams. Well, the kids know that I always finish up each term by showing a movie of the book we just read. Since we have short periods now (just 40 minutes long until after Sports Day), we need to take two weeks for each class in order to view most of the movie. I had thought about showing the students the original 1972 version of Charlotte’s Web that I saw when I was a kid. But in watching it last week, I realized that it is a bit corny for 9- and 10-year-olds today. I will show them a four-minute trailer (preview) of the older movie, however. I also have a copy of the sequel – Charlotte’s Web 2: Wilbur’s Great Adventure. Perhaps I’ll give that to Teacher Colin to show during one of his Movie Club sessions next term. Thus, we’ll be watching the 2006 live-action version of the film; I did edit a bit of the movie in the middle so we will be able to view as much of it as possible in the allotted amount of time. I even added new credits at the end to list all of the P4 students from this term. One of the special surprises I like to do for the kids every once in a while.
We discussed Chapters 19 and 20 in the Week 16 lessons (I ended up reading the majority of Chapter 19 aloud in each of the classes that week) and Chapters 21 and 22 during Week 17. I didn’t give the kids any new vocabulary words apart from having them write down Charlotte’s two definitions of “humble” (I’d talked about these during the Week 15 lessons but forgot to have the kids put them in their notebooks). And we didn’t do any Q&A (questions and answers). One reason for this is that there is very little they need to remember from the last four chapters for the final exam. Instead, the exam includes several passages from these chapters which the students will read during the test and then answer questions about. I’ll write another post later listing some of the things to study for the finals (again, both the Listening and Reading exams will cover Charlotte’s Web).
The students’ marks for Weeks 16 and 17 (ten points for each week) were given for notebook work – neatness and completeness of notes taken during my in-class summaries of the various chapters as well as for writing assignments that varied from class to class.
For example, P4/Yellow had to give me a summary of the book – either listing the various things they remembered (by reading it or by listening closely in class) or articulating these into sentences and paragraphs. It can be difficult to summarize an entire book spread over several months of classes but I am constantly reminding the kids of earlier plot elements throughout the class discussions. I was truly surprised by what some of these students remembered or found important. Indeed, I was very impressed with the results.
P4/Red never got to that point. When we were on the 50-minute schedule, I had the unenviable task of following their Drama lesson (which is, by design, a fun and rowdy period) with the Reading class (which, by necessity, must be quiet and teacher-led). The kids were always hyped-up from Teacher Candice’s class and didn’t always want to calm down right away and be as quiet as I needed them to be. With the 40-minute schedule, they have the Drama lesson and then lunch so that’s been a double-whammy. In Week 17, they were particularly noisy and the interruptions got to such a level while I was trying to read aloud the paragraph in which Charlotte finally dies that I warned them one more outburst would result in their NOT being allowed to watch the movie. Right after that, a student burst out with a question (totally forgetting the class policy of “hand up and wait your turn”) completely unrelated to the lesson (something along the lines of “Teacher, what color are you for Sports Day?”). I responded by asking the rest of the class to thank this particular student for removing their opportunity to watch the movie. Much groaning at this point but they were quiet for the rest of the period. At the end, I gave them an “out” by telling them to write down a reason that I should let them watch the movie after all despite their misbehavior during class time. Well, to make a long story shorter, P4/Red will be watching the movie next week along with the rest of the students.
In P4/Star, we had a nice participatory session about the themes in the book and points were given based the level of each student’s participation in the lesson. They also had to tell me what the main problem (conflict) in the book was as well as the solution. Finally, the kids in P4/Green received their points by finding the animals at the zoo (we even saw a rat in one of the food stands!).
