Monday, March 29, 2010

Guest Teaching

Before I headed home from my weekend this afternoon, I spent about 90 minutes in a friend's 3rd grade classroom. I hung out in the back while Robin finished up a spelling lesson with a small group of students. After a morning snack it was my turn to do a writing activity.

Guest teacher has got to be the best gig ever. I started by showing 30 photographs that I had brought along with me. The shots ranged from landscape pictures of Maine, Colorado, and the Carolina seashore to macro shots of flowers, snails and water droplets. The students were full of compliments for the pictures and excited to try a little writing. We developed the lesson together. It was decided that we would each choose a picture to write about but not let anyone else know our choice. After five minutes of writing without interruption we'd share our thoughts and try to figure out which picture the writer used as inspiration.

For those five minutes there wasn't a sound, just pencils moving along the page. Once the pencils came to rest everyone was anxious to share their work. My favorite? It had to be the young girl who described a picture of fresh strawberries as fruit wearing a gnome hat.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a fun lesson! Did you know ahead of time what you would have them do?

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  2. There is no age better than third grade! How awesome. Guest writer and photographer, as well as teacher!

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