Ideas for Relief Lessons - Primary 1 and 2

Many of us have been in this position before. You are suddenly called to relief a class, at a level that you have never taught before. This is difficult for a number of teachers, because you are unaware of the skills and abilities of that class. So how do you find something to occupy them with, and yet not drive yourself crazy?

You can do the fierce teacher act and order everyone to take a book to read in silence, but that can make some classes try to rebel against you. Usually it's less stressful if you engage the class in an activity that they are interested in.

With that in mind, here's an idea for relieving a Primary 1 or Primary 2 class. It's not necessarily educational, but since you're just relieving the class, it doesn't hurt to do something fun at the same time! And the materials needed are easily found in school, or in your students' schoolbags.

Hand Animals

Materials needed: Paper, pencil, colouring materials

Time: One period ( Inclusive of you giving the class instructions on how to carry this out )

What to do:

1. Put hand on paper.

2. Draw outline of hand.

3. Add eyes, hooves, hair to make it look like an animal.

4. Colour.

Easy isn't it? This can be easily done by most Primary 1 or Primary 2 students. If you want to make it more interesting, you can draw a weird-looking animal, or make it into an alien instead. Demonstrate it first, so that they can see how to do it, and then let them loose to their imaginations!

Reopening

After some time, I decided I would reopen this blog again. I had no idea at the time, but apparently ideas on teachers and teaching are quite popular around the Internet. Even after the blog officially closed, I was still receiving comments and email from a few people, surprisingly. This made me think that maybe ideas on teaching are still being googled, and I do find myself googling ideas for lessons at work.

So I'll make a second try at this blog. Here's to more good stuff!