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.