Transcript

One of the things that I also do every day in my class is Show and Tell. Show and Tell is the opportunity for my students to speak to an audience about something that they are familiar with. They bring something from home, it could be a toy. It could be a photo; it could be anything. I always tell them it doesn't have to be a toy. It could be really anything that you would like to talk about. 

It's their opportunity to start thinking of little details that are important when you talk to an audience, such as looking at your audience. Some students their volume of voice is really low, so when I have those situations, I move to the opposite corner of the classroom and I tell them "I cannot hear, no, I cannot hear you. Raise your voice". It forces them to use their voice. If they are showing something, make sure that everybody can see what you're talking about because they tend to look at their Show and Tell and it's like they're showing it to the ceiling. They're talking about something and "oh, here there's this little color or this something nice here", and everybody says "but I cannot see, but I cannot see". So I tell them to make sure that everybody can see, and it's not just this side of the audience. It's the whole audience so you have to show it. They really get good at that. If they are able to do that in the first grade, to me, it's a way of making sure that they are going to be successful speakers when they grow older. 

Show and Tell is also an opportunity for me to ask them to bring something that relates to something we're working on in the classroom. For example, if we're doing something related to science, then I ask them to bring something related to that. For example, we're talking about tools. We're working on the unit Materials and Structures. For this week, everybody has to bring a tool. It could be anything, a tool from the kitchen, from construction, repairing things, or for writing, or anything like that. They get to talk about that. 

Another example would be when we were talking about different types of media literacy. That week they have to bring an example of media. They can bring a book; they could bring a newspaper or a magazine, or a pamphlet. Anything that had to do with all the examples of media that we were discussing and they had to explain why and what the message was because it's always important to talk about what the message is in every type of media that we're talking about. 

The parents are very aware of when their children have to bring their show and tell. They have an assigned day of the week to do that. Also, they are informed through my newsletters what it is that their children are supposed to bring. It always works nicely. Of course, I tell my students because I like to create this sense of responsibility and I always tell the parents that I'm telling you this, but I want your child to also tell you because it creates this sense of "this is what we have to do for this week", as opposed to not being aware of what's happening and the parents are doing everything for them. Their parents, a lot of the times tell me "oh yeah, he told me or she told me". So it's nice to see how they start to feel responsible for their own learning.