Observation: Instant Activities For Older Students

The students were not active within 45 seconds. The instant activity that we chose needed too much explanation for this age group, resulting in the students not actually starting the activity quick enough. Unfortunely, this activity needed a lot of instructions for 2nd graders to be able to play the activity adequately. For example, the students needed to be able to trade their shark cards, then read the card when the music stopped, so we had to explain to the students that they were going to start out with shark cards, then they were going to trade the shark cards when the music started, and then the music stops and they needed to freeze and then they needed to open up their shark and see what activity they needed to do when the music wasn't going. It was just too much information for second graders. This activity may have gone over better with older students. To correct this in the future, I would not do this with this young of an age group, at least not as an instant activity.

I think you would be able to quickly tell older students that when the music started they needed to trade their cards and then look inside to start the activity, but I think the younger kids didn't quite understand that. I also found that a lot of them needed me to read the activity that was inside the shark, so then they weren't quite as active as they could have been during the instant activity.
The quality was also not up to par. The students didn't understand that when the music wasn't playing they were supposed to do the activity that was written on their shark card. The students also had trouble reading some of the things on their cards or understanding them so I had to explain them to them. To correct this in the future, I would choose activities for the shark cards that were easier for the students to perform and I would have played different music for when the students were supposed to be performing the shark activity.