Thoughts and...

Reflections on the great endeavor our Summer Language Partnership students, teachers, and other contributors experienced this pass week. It was an enriching experience for me to have participated in this innovating learning atmosphere. The most fulfilling aspect of this program for me is what I learned from the students. They brought so much insight to our invitations. We provided invitations that we hoped would spark their interest. We were glad they found invites which tapped into their intrinsic motivation to "attend". We were even more elated in the way their inquiries unfolded each day and the leading responsibility they adopted. As we invited our groups to choose which inquiry to explore, with the guidance of our mentors, we the teachers embraced our role as facilitators. Our students were able to demonstrate and teach others what they had learned... a higher order thinking skill. This I believe, reflected a meaningful learning opportunity for our multilingual and culturally diverse students. Furthermore, in respect to the invitations that were not accepted by the students, I consider that this also provided a valuable learning experience for them. The students were involved in a democratic educational practice, in which they took an active role in choosing what they wanted to learn. Consequently, the invitations they did not choose this time around may be the "seeds" that they can "plant" on a different occasion.

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?