This was my first visit with Mrs. Condie's second grade class at Sierra Bonita Elementary. This first lesson was on the prefixes re and un. We began class by defining the term prefix. Most of the students understood that a prefix is a word that is added to the beginning of another word, and that it changes the original word's meaning. Once this was established, we talked about the definitions to the prefixes re (again) and un (not), and listed off some words with these prefixes that we were familiar with, such as rewrite, redo, undo, unwind, etc.
Next came the dancing! We stared out exploring different ways we could move our bodies, such as bending, twisting, curving, melting, jumping, etc. We then explored how adding these prefixes in front of our dance terms would change our movement. For example we would bend, then rebend by bending again in a new way, and then unbend by straightening. Some of these were easier to do, while others challenged the students to think about how the prefix could change the movement. An example of this is when we started exploring the word jump. Rejumping was fairly easy, but how exactly can you unjump? Remembering that un means not, one student suggested we could not jump by falling to the floor. So that is exactly what we did: Jump! Rejump! (jump again in a new and exciting way) Unjump! (by collapsing to the floor)
For the last activity I divided the class into small groups consisting of four or five students. Their challenge was to create their own short dance and then figure out how they could a undo the whole thing and then to redo it. Once their dances were created we had each group go one at a time to perform what they had created.
Overall it was a successful first class, the students had fun and I think the went away with a better understanding of the prefixes re and un.
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