Reflections July 31

Invitations

3-5 Group Reflection

Today, our three invitation groups continued to delve deeper into their subjects. Jennifer took it upon herself to pull aside some students from each group who were interested, but perhaps not as focused, in/on their invitations; I think this was a great help as I saw her working with them individually to develop their own questions and to focus their explorations. Steve's group (and later my group, after stealing his idea) conducted a survey of all the participants in our camp in which he tallied how many students had each kind of pet at home. I look forward to seeing how that group will utilize the information in graph form to illustrate that diversity. It's been fun to see Sandra's kids beginning their individual/group projects; I understand we can expect a model fooze-ball table, among other things, come Friday. While each of us are wrestling with what our final products will be, I'm beginning to see signs that kids are becoming little experts in their respective 'fields'.

I'm sometimes inclined to think that our Internet searches and other research endeavors are scattershot -- meaning that the kids aren't focusing intensely on any 1 question, and are instead quickly inclined to jump to another path of inquiry based on the prior search. In retrospect though, I think that would be natural for a curious young mind presented with the vague directions to explore any one of our invitations. In this context though, 'vagueness' is at the very heart of our invitation process. While on first glance the information gathering seems erratic, I can sense from conversations overheard between students that their overall understanding of the subjects are growing. And what we're after this week is increasing that body of knowledge -- at this point, without direct coordination with GPS standards. That said, I can already name a handful of literacy standards I see being addressed within each group. Further alignment with standards will come with practice on our parts.

Reflections July 30

As we toured the areas and neighborhoods that our students come from, what contrasts did you notice? What observations did you make? What evidence of funds of knowledge did you recognize? What insights or understandings of your students' lives did this 'field trip' help develop?

Tuesday 3-5 Reflections

Our group continued to be impressed and surprized with the level of engagement of the students with their topics. Students have come up with some very interesting questions to explore and are using and refining their internet research skills in looking for answers. All three groups are struggling in various ways to come up with a product or project at the end of the week to reflect their learning. This is not terribly surprizing; the students are used to being told what they must do for a final product, not have to come up with something on their own. We realize we will probably need to be more involved in helping them select a culminating product.

Reflections July 29

What things have surprised you so far?
What "funds of knowledge" have you learned your students may be bringing with them?
How may our learning this week transfer/transform our regular classroom practice?

Tuesday's K-2 Reflection

Linda and Alicia really had to be fluid with their plans today because most of the students chose one invitation. Then when Linda had to work with a small group on poems she found that the students really needed to have concrete examples, pictures, etc.
This group really felt that they needed to slow down.
Both groups really enjoyed the "All About Me" bags. The students really talked and connected with each other. They also explained their bags.
Also, both groups did not really achieve all of the goals that they had for the day. The older group really only hit about half of what they had planned, which alters the rest of the week.

3 - 5 grade group reflection

Last week, our group produced four invitations which we planned to offer to the students on Monday. In summary, we invited students to consider male/female roles, where does our food originate, the types of games people play around the world, and the animals people keep as pets. Although we asked some questions to get them started, we deliberately kept the invitations broad and loosely focused to give students a good deal of choice in where they went with the invitation after they selected it. We wanted to give the students as much choice as possible within the framework of a one week camp.
Today, the students seemed genuinely excited about the invitation format, which was enhanced by enclosing the invitations in large (2ft.x 18in.) colored envelopes that were affixed to the whiteboard in the front of the room. The students were thoroughly engaged in the invitation process and enthusiastically went about making secret ballot selections of their first and second choices of invitations to accept. We had decided on a secret ballot selection process to insure that students were genuinely interested in the topics and not simply selecting based on their friends' selections. Having them select first and second choices gave the students a choice while giving us some opportunity of shaping the groups to provide for diverse learning styles and knowledge base. We were also concerned that the students might gravitate toward one or two invitations and having them select two invitations optimized the chance that all invitations might be explored. In the end, our concerns were justified, the games invitation was selected by almost all participants. But because they had made two selections, we were able to form three groups to explore three invitations. We were disappointed that none of the students had selected the gender roles invitation; we thought that this invitation held great promise for an inquiry based exploration. Reflecting on the choices, we wondered whether students perceived this invitation as too academically oriented or if they were simply not attuned culturally or developmentally to this issue. Nonetheless, we believed that we could incorporate some of these issues into the invitations that the students did select.
The students seemed very motivated by the invitations and quickly got into an inquiry mode. All three groups became thoroughly engaged, reading previously selected books, researching questions on the internet, and identifying and discussing questions of interest. The challenge for tomorrow is to guide, but not force, the students along paths of inquiry that will lead to a productive learning experience and some cumulative product by Friday morning.

Reflection July 28

Congratulations on a FABULOUS day!! Everything went smoothly and all of the students seemed to be actively engaged in their activities. I am anxious to see what the younger students bring in their "All About Me" bags to share tomorrow. I am also excited about the amount and variety of technology being used throughout the groups. Eventhough the invitation on gender roles was not taken up in the older group, I think there are ways issues of gender could be explored through the other topics. I am looking forward to seeing how things evolve tomorrow. I am curious to know what, if anything, surprised you today? What quesions did your students come up with in relation to their chosen inquiry? What, if anything, was frustrating or did not go as you expected? After the jigsaw reading and discussion this afternoon, what possible reflections or minipresentations do you developing? What ideas do we have for creating culturally relevant and authentic text sets and resources?

Mondays K-2 Reflection

Today was an excellent day! We were all pleasantly surprised by how eager the older students were to be here and by how much the majority of the students came in knowing. The younger students came in a bit reluctant and hesitant, but eventually warmed up throughout the morning. All of the younger students loved drawing, creating, coloring, etc. as well as games and songs and movement. We look forward to the rest of this week and working with such diverse students.

Technology Resource Page...Check it out!

I have created a site that has links to various Powerpoints, Songs, Poems, Fingerplays, and good kid interactive sites to visit and use. I hope this helps with your planning this week.

http://summerpartnership.googlepages.com/home

I have the K-1 Group (Denise and Lisa) set up to use the computer lab daily from 9:30 - 10:00 and the 1-2 Group (Linda and Alicia) from 10:00 - 10:30. After 10:30 the lab is open for the 3-5 groups to use for research, Powerpoints, or word processing. Please let me know what I can do to help out the 3-5 groups tech-wise.

Reflections on Planning Day 2

Food for Thought...

What if a whole school incorporates or utiltizes the "invitations" ideology? What would it take to be successful? What obstacles might you encounter?

Reflections

Today was great and I am excited about our work together! I think this is a fabulous group of educators and I appreciate everyone's enthusiastic participation. Please comment to this post to share your reflection on today.
what protocols or activities did you find the most valuable or interesting?
Do you have more thoughts to share from the "chalk talk" activity or other discussion around teaching practices/philosophies?
What would you change? do more/less of?
Anything else you want to share about your thoughts and ideas...

Download Jigsaw and others?

Do we need to download the Jigsaw and other protocols from the blog? Steve

On Thursday July 24...

We will meet in the Media Center at 9am. Please park in the front of the building, enter through the main entrance, take the first hallway on the right and the media center is on the left.
Coffee and breakfast snacks will be provided
Please read Chapter 1 of "What If and Why" before Thursday (pgs. 1-11)
We will have access to the computer lab throughout the program, but feel free to bring your laptop or jump drive.