I am probably not the first teacher to comment on this, but the difference between the morning and afternoon is the children being awake and sleepy. The mornings are the easiest time to get things done, the children are more alert in the morning, at least mine are after the morning song with exercise, and come afternoon they tend to be rather tired. I also tend to notice that if you do not keep the children entertained, they are more likely to start getting sleepy earlier in the day.
There are a variety of things I do throughout the day to keep the children awake. For example, this year every morning after prayer, we have a morning song. Something like "Go Crazy" by Jackson Harris is a popular song in the morning. I get all the students up and get them to dance and exercise by their desk. If you throw in a few silly dance moves it really gets the kids excited. You just have to be willing to laugh at yourself or embarrass yourself in front of a class of kids, and the morning song becomes a popular hit. My class loves this part of the day so much, that the students requested that they get to take turns leading the class in the morning song exercises and dance. We call this person the fitness trainer.
The biggest thing of teaching is keeping the children entertained while you teach. The funnier you are, the more likely the children will pay attention to you, along with your principal standing out in the hallway laughing at you while looking through your window. The only thing you need to remember is that you must be able to laugh at yourself when someone catches you doing something rather silly for your students. I will do almost anything to keep my class entertained, become an actor and act out an example of a word meaning, I sometimes carry a yard stick around during math class on my belt loops like it is a sword (I will even knight my students for correct answers), or today I taught a fifteen minute portion of my reading lesson as if I were a stand up comedian. I would love to say I do this just for the kids, but really it makes the job fun.
Today towards the end of our day, I noticed the heads dropping. I immediately said, "Alright class, let's start taking in some deep breaths! We need to fill our bodies up with some oxygen!" I was sure this time to leave out my explanation that yawning is a sign of lack of oxygen. "Come on everyone let's start taking a deep breath in..."
Before finishing my sentence, Mary up front says, "Ms. J. why are you so energetic? You are like this all the time."
