Reflection on a Teacher's Instruction

Prefixes, Root Words, and Suffixes

On Thursday, September 18th, in Mrs. Wright’s fifth grade classroom we did a class wide activity using the smart board. I am actually not sure how well using the smart board works. I think that it may distract the students. I do think it is a very good visual learning tool, but the students got so excited and talkative. Mrs. Wright found a website online called www.brainpop.com. On this site there is a short animated video that the students can watch to aid in teaching prefixes, root words, and suffixes. I think prefixes, root words, and suffixes are important to teach to students because it is a tool to help the students decipher new words and their definitions; not just now but also in the future.
The first thing Mrs. Wright did was tell the students that they could sit anywhere in the classroom as long as they could see and could pay attention. This was interesting to me because it gave the students some freedom. Also the command gave the students some responsibility is picking somewhere that fit both of Mrs. Wright’s stipulations. Mrs. Wright then played the video completely through one time and allowed the students to watch the movie without interruptions. I feel that letting the students watch the video and soak up the information was a very good teaching tactic. Not interrupting the movie probably also helped the students to keep their train of thought and pay attention to the video, which moved the new information into their short term memory.
After the video, Mrs. Wright, asked each student to take out a piece of notebook paper and a pencil. She then replayed the video from the beginning, but this time she told the students she would be stopping it on key information that they would need to write down. She stopped the video on the definition for prefix, suffix, and root word. Immediately after the definitions for each word, came examples of each type. The characters in the video then put all three together to form one word. Mrs. Wright then paused the video and called on one student to go to the board and write the definition for the new word. For example, the word unsuccessful; a student got to go to the board and write that that meant “not successful. By the students getting to participate in this visual imagery activity they used an effective learning strategy. Also engaging the students in fun, hands on activity facilitates in moving the information into their long-term memory.
This activity took place on Thursday and today (Tuesday) Mrs. Wright reviewed this concept with the class. Over half of the students answered all of the questions correctly. The students were so excited to answer the questions because they knew the correct answer. I really enjoyed this activity and will use it in my classroom in some form.