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I assigned the following activity during a 5th grade, ELA unit on rainforests: using construction paper, and only by tearing it, students were asked to create an imaginary creature whose habitat was the rainforest. After creating the creature, students wrote a descriptive paragraph, detailing the creature's diet, behavior patterns, and adaptations that enabled it to survive in a rainforest. This work sample is my own. I took the assignment seriously, and had fun creating the creature. This had the effect of modeling pride in one’s work for my students, and I think my full-hearted participation made the activity seem more authentic to my students, which aided me in managing classroom behavior for the duration of the lesson, as the vast majority of my students were thoroughly engaged in the activity, and outbursts or misbehavior was minimal. What I took from reflecting on this particular lesson, was a sense of the importance of participating in activities with one’s students, and not using assignment and activities that are abstract and banal, or treating them as such. |