Monday, July 28, 2008
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?
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8 comments:
Today went well. The students were totally engaged and excited about their learning invitations. Our challenge is getting the students to narrow their research and focus on one aspect of the invitation.
This day was incredible for me. This is the first time I have worked/taught at the camp and I didn't know what to expect. I was surprised at how glad the children seemed to be there! Our group devoured every activity we had for them. While some were shy at first, everyone in our group started warming up to us and each other quickly. I also especially enjoyed team-teaching with Alicia. I find it inspiring and motivation to work/teach closely with other teachers like this. Also, the young lady, "Estephanie," that was assigned to assist was so helpful and responsible. I could tell that great care was taken in selecting these young people. My first day experience with the camp today has left me feeling very grateful to be part of such a wonderful endeavor. It is something that will connect these children and their families to school and visa versa.
I thought today went really well! I loved co-teaching with my partner and found it very liberating as well as informative. The students were also a joy to work with, helping me to become more excited about this week and less unsure about what is coming up. I look forward to tomorrow as well as the rest of the week.
The students arrive! And we begin to put some of theory of invitations into practice. Overall, the day went well. The students were very enthusiastic about the warm-up activity, a bingo type activity that got all of the students up and moving around the classroom and discovering who had 16 different characteristics or experiences.
They were excited to discover the 4 invitations the teachers had written which, thanks to Sandra, had been slipped into 2 ft. long envelopes and addressed to the class. In the pets group, the kids were entranced by the cokcroaches, graciously supplied by Richard, and wanted to know what kind they were. So we trouped over to the comuter center for our first internet search of the camp. The students got right to work and found a plethora of sites with pictures of cockroaches...who knew there were so many different kinds! After a short while, all the students had successfully identified them as Madagascar cockroaches. Their inquiry experience had begun. Overall, I was very pleased with the first day. The trick will be to see if I can channel their inquiry into productive avenues. While not terribly important for this week, if I am going to be able to use this method in my classroom, I will have to develop such a skill. The jigsaw activity at the end of the day was helpful in my planning for tomorrow. I will incorporate a student reflection piece into the schedule for tomorrow.
I am glad everyone so far seems to have had such positive and energizing experiences. The students are often enthusiastic participants in these camps, eventhough it is the end of July. I suspect this may be because many of their options for summer activities we typically think of are limited due to transportation, economics, etc. Maybe later this week we can take a little field trip to see the neighborhoods of many of our students to futher our understanding of their out of school lives.
Like Steve, I was very pleased with our 'getting to know you activity', that was originally suggested and designed by Jennifer. For a Monday morning in the middle of the summer, the kids were energetic and even though it wasn't the beginning of the formal school year, I felt like they were happy to be back at school in most cases. I have to say, I have a great group of kids who were completely engaged for the hour that we had to work in our invitation-specific groups. They were attentive and eager to work on the subject at-hand. While in the computer lab, on first glance, it could appear as though they were off-task but as I looked closer, they were each off in different directions -- but all of them were researching aspects of food and nutrition.. Like most of us in the older group, tomorrow will be focused on refining our explorations. And I totally agree with Rebeccah in that gender will/could eventually fit into the other three invitations. I can also tell that cooperation will not be a problem; these kids were working together today on everything, without my prompting, which was especially nice in the case of one of my students who has limited English proficiency. As I said, a great group of kids!
We have a cute little group. We were pleased to discover that quite a few of the up and coming kindergarteners went to pre-k. Most of them knew how to write their names and knew the letters in their name. Yeah!
I thought today went really well. It was so nice to see some familiar faces again. The group of upcoming kindergarten students are so excited about learning! They seem to have really enjoyed everything that they have done so far. I am really exited to see how the rest of the week unfolds.
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