Brigham PreK - Sense of Taste

Last Thursday, I was in the preschool room again at Brigham. I was in the room as an assistant and we were talking about the sense of taste. This was a difficult lesson to teach because there were a few foods we could not use because of allergies in the classroom. However, the teachers that day were very flexible and did a great job making the lesson work for the preschoolers! I had the opportunity to work towards my goal this day because I had a station by myself and work one on one with all of the students in this class. My goals were to become more confident when working with English Language Learners and learn accommodations to make for these students in the classroom.

During this lesson I was in charge of the station that had the pretzels. The students were testing out their sense of taste and exploring the taste of things that were salty. The goal was for them to choose salty when they had to pick a taste. I knew that many of the students would be familiar with pretzels and have most likely tasted them before.  When the students came to my station I thought of questions to try to target their prior knowledge. When the students came to my table I asked them all what the food was in the bag. I wanted to check what they knew before assuming they knew that the food was and if they were familiar with the food they would be able to categorize the taste easier. Most of them answered with “sticks” or just looked at me. I did not know what other names the students had for this food, so that was helpful when the first group called the pretzels, sticks. All of the students consistently called them sticks, so I knew it was something that was common for them to call pretzels. I tried asking the students if they had tasted anything similar to pretzels to see if they could relate the taste to other foods, more specifically salty foods. Most all of them were silent and did not answer me. When the students came back to my table, they had to choose between the four taste categories and they were supposed to choose salty at my station. There were a few of the students that knew right away. For other students I went through and named the category and related it to another food they were familiar with. Most of the students were able to write their name in the correct category.

After this lesson I think that I have gained more confidence when working with and teaching English Language Learners. I was able target their previous knowledge to learn about this new vocabulary and content. I was able to ask the students different questions to get them thinking about different foods and how they taste. I think that I am gaining more and more confidence each time I work with students at Brigham. However, I have not yet worked towards my goal of learning accommodations for English Language Learners. I think this is my next focus for when I do my lesson in Kindergarten soon.