6th Grade Lesson: I'm Faster than You!

6th grade has proven the most challenging for me to teach. With most of my prior experience in Early Childhood and Early Elementary education, I'm used to singing songs and leading cheers and happily engaging with my class. The 6th grade (12 year old) students in their last semester of Elementary school clearly respond to my teaching differently than a group of 5 year-olds. Thus, I've had to make a lot of adjustments to my teaching style and method to meet their needs. I'm also learning that with older children, respect is gained largely from close, personal relationships. And so I'm working to show my students I trust and respect them in the classroom and working to find opportunities to get to know them better as individuals. While we're not there yet, I'm proud of what we've accomplished together and am excited about what I'm learning.

This Chapters's Topic: "I'm Faster Than You" was another excellent one for providing authentic practice (with a little creative thinking.) Though we still have some kinks to work out, I'm proud of what we studied the past two weeks.

Lesson 1: Introducing New Vocabulary and Phrases

To get the kids excited, (and in a desperate attempt to be cool) I began the unit with a Korean class' cover of Daft Punk's by "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." Students were amazed with the performance and were able to correctly identify our target language by the end of the song. Then, I continued eliciting vocabulary in an exciting way- with a race in the classroom! I asked two students to perform several tasks- running and jumping, in front of the class. We determined the winners and I asked students to tell me in a complete sentence who was faster. Then, after learning key vocabulary and phrases, I asked students to line up in the back of the classroom from tallest to shortest. BUT they had to do it silently, in one minute! They loved the challenge. I then had them practice "I'm taller than A and I'm shorter than B" down the line. We continued practicing at our seats with a partner speaking game and some partner competitions to determine who was stronger, younger, etc.

Lesson 2: Speaking and Reading Practice

Students picked up the speaking phrases quickly and so I was eager to apply those skills in more complex situations in our second class. Per the recommendation of my brilliant co-teacher, I made a lesson using the fable of the Wind and the Sun. After a quick warm up activity, students watched a subtitled video of the parable and were asked to pick out the comparative and past tense phrases. Here's the lesson.

After discussing grammar points, students then answered the question "who do you think is stronger, the wind or the sun" in discussion groups. I was happy to see them talking and more eager to share than usual.

Lesson 3: Reading and Writing Practice

Having now discussed the topic of myths, I thought that an excellent way to engage students from a new angle would be through the introduction of a traditional Native American folk story. I was hoping to teach students a little bit about a new culture while continuing to practice comparative language. Thus, I re-wrote one myth, "The Heron and the Hummingbird," as a readers-theatre piece! It was my first time using reading practice in this format and I was very pleased with the results. The structure allows students to gain confidence and practice comfortably and had them engaged and speaking for almost the entire 50 minutes. You can get the piece here. 

Lesson 4: Language Creation

In the last lesson of the unit, I like to give my students projects to complete in order to apply the language they've learned meaningfully. This week, we had SO much fun doing so! After a quick "Word Lotto" review, students were asked to create a storyboard/comic strip using the target language (3 comparative words and 3 past tense verb forms). They could make a creation myth similar to the ones we had read or make an entirely new story. The students had a blast and I'll let the creations speak for themselves :-)