Working with elementary school students is exciting and allows us to have fun and be creative. One of our lessons at Perley Elementary School in South Bend involved a fictional farm, animals, and lots of hilarious hijinks!
When we arrived to the classroom, we warmed our students up with a game. The Opposite Game gets our students up and moving, engages their brains and bodies, commands their focus, and sets the overall tone of the lesson. We don’t want our students’ minds or bodies wandering away from the main objective.
After a rousing game, we talked with the students about farm life. Who might live on the fictional Farmer Dell’s farm? Our students came up with an extensive list including:
- Pigs
- Horses
- Cows
- Owls
- Cats
- Dogs
- Sheep
- Ducks
Then we had our students come up with a list of forbidden activities for the animals:
- Baking Cakes
- Eating ice cream
- “Swag”
- Going on a cruise
- Having a party
- Breaking tractors
From there we narrowed our lists down. We assigned each student an animal, assigned each corner of the room an activity, and sent the animals to have FUN! The students acted our the hijinks they were getting into like diving into buckets of melting ice, tanning on the deck of a cruise ship, and building flying machines out of tractor parts.
Once every animal had their turn at a station, they all sat down and wrote an apology letter to Farmer Dell. We instructed them to use as much detail as possible. Once the letters were finished Ms. Christy, acting as Farmer Dell, arrived on the scene. She saw how naughty the animals had been, and some of them were brave enough to read their apologies out loud for all the animals to hear. Overall it was a fun lesson, giving students a chance to perform as well as learn how to write with detail and defend their actions.
