Second JA Session

Well, today I had my second JA session with my class.

Today's lesson didn't go exactly as planned, but in the end everything worked out well and the students and I had fun. Originally, I wanted to spend about 10 minutes with the students reviewing last week's lesson, begin the discussion on decision-making and consequences of choices, then play the board game for about 30 minutes. I ended up spending too much time with the discussion because the students were coming up with so many good examples of decision-making and consequences of choices in their lives. So we ended up only having about 15 minutes to play the game.

The students were really confused over the game. They didn't understand the point of it and it was difficult to explain it to them. Once I started passing out the game supplies, the students began to get really excited and noisy. Every time I tried explaining the rules of the game, half of the class would continue talking. Also, their teacher was out on jury duty, so the substitute teacher was the only one there to back me up. So I guess the students felt they were a little more free to be noisy during class. I did my best to get the students to quiet down and play the game without having to yell at them. I went around to each table and explained the rules to each group to make sure everyone was on the same page. Towards the end of the period, all the students were playing the game correctly and were on task. However, the period ended a little too soon for a winner to be decided.

The only part I didn't like about this lesson plan were the game cards. They wouldn't tear so easily along the lines, so my students got a bunch of torn up cards. There were so many cards to tear too.