Week 8: My learning/teaching experience

For my lesson, I want to make Play-Doh with the students because it is a fun and hands on activity that relates to science. In a classroom, a teacher has the ability to build a bridge with students by teaching them something that relates to what they are interested in. First, you can make the idea of your teaching topic connect with what the students enjoy doing. To first engage my students, I would show them what we are going to make and how we  are going to make it through a video or discussion. I would then discuss the ingredients of Play-Doh and how each individual ingredient combined will create the Play-Doh. Then, I would get the students involved by making the Play-Doh themselves and allowing them to color their own and bring it home with them! But before they clean everything up, they would be able to play with their Play-Doh for a few minutes to see what they created and allowing them to be interested in what they are learning, therefore building a bridge. When teaching this topic, I will be focusing on what the students enjoy doing and how they will be learning and benefiting from this activity. By engaging the students and making them do hands on work, they are less likely to get bored, and are actually learning in a fun and cool way. I will need to realize that these kinds of hands on activities may not be as fun or benefitting for each class that I teach because each student is different, which relates to Ohanian's concept. I can also show the students that I am passionate and caring about how they learn and what they are interested in. When I become a teacher, I want to be able to create these bridges between what students should be learning and what they are interested in so that I can provide a healthy and strong learning environment for students.