Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Exhaustion...

8 March 2012

Today turned out to be a bit of a struggle with 2nd grade.

First, I think that the 2nd graders are suffering from spring fever. They are restless, and they are having difficulty  staying on task during our more active activities.

Furthermore, it turns out that 2nd graders are more sensitive than I could possibly have imagined. I've seen evidence of this before, but I thought it was a fluke. In fact, I think that 2nd graders may be more sensitive than 1st graders. I'm not sure if it's because we think that they are older and can handle more, but they can't. Or, if it's that 2nd grade is just a more demanding year for them than 1st grade.

Either way, by the end of the day, I had three 2nd graders crying all due to a game.

Since my 2nd graders are studying "face" vocabulary, I thought it would be fun to play Simon Says with them as a review and then teach them "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."

By the end of the game Simon Says, there were three kids crying... One, because everyone was accusing her of cheating and copying someone else's gestures. Another, because he made a mistake--though he claimed it was because he couldn't hear over everyone else. Lastly, I saw a girl do the wrong gesture and told her to sit down like everyone else.

Needless to say, I tried to reassure them that it's just a game. We're all there to learn and have fun.

I'm not sure what happens between 1st and 2nd grade, but everything becomes a huge deal and is much more dramatic than it needs to be. Of all my classes, the kids in 2nd grade tend to have the most attitude, they tend to be the pettiest, and the most prone to fights/arguments.

Next, I taught them the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Most of them knew the song already--or at least the tune. So that lightened up the mood a little bit after all the crying.