Teaching The Kids

When the time came to teach the kids, our end product was a nicely made and organized project that would teach the children all the criteria of our station and go deeper into the lesson. For the most part, the children payed attention to us and listened to what we had to say, even if it did lean towards the boring side of teaching. They were very interested in the chickens and learning about their behaviors. We first introduced ourselves and jumped right into having the kids observe the chickens as they roam about the garden. We let them watch and pet the chickens as they wandered around and called them back into a group after a few minutes to discuss anything they had noticed. They all noticed the same behaviors : pecking, scratching, and digging around in the dirt. We explained to them what these behaviors mean and how what they're doing actually helps the environment. After this, we discussed some "fun" chicken facts with the kids that were interested in what we had to say. They found some of the facts cool, but they mostly were too busy obsessing over the chickens. Finally, we let them dig around with the "claws" to have them pretend to be a chicken looking for food and to give them a kind of view into the mindset of a chicken. We had them search the surface layers of dirt for any food a chicken would eat, and many groups found worms throughout the garden. We had the children write down and sketch any foods or cool things they found in the garden, and soon they rotated to the next station. While I believe we did a pretty good job, we do have things we can all improve on. Our groups would often wander about and we often had to regain their attention and call the group back, so entertainment is something we need more work on. Another thing is I'm not a fan of public speaking and am very introverted when it comes to people I know nothing about, so I often didn't say much or just added little onto what my other group members said. I think I should definitely improve on this and work on speaking to help make our lesson as entertaining and informative as possible.