Tuesday, February 7, 2012

thursday


Personalizing Learning
We played “hangman” today… we changed the name to “rooster”. It was hard to disassociate the word with the game. They really enjoyed playing the game. It was a pretty good laugh. This was one of those attention grabbing games that I could definitely see them using in their classroom. I am looking forward to seeing what words they choose.
Moses came to the front and did the word “psychology”. It was really nice to see their enthusiasm for this game. This was a quick fun game the students could play by themselves or a great teacher guided activity.
I introduced the “Check-In” game. You simply go around the room and you have the students, and in this case teachers, say their first name and one word to describe their day or mood. For example… Sophia Happy. So we broke the teachers down into 4 groups and had them check-in with us. One teacher in particular was very sweet and said his name and then said “thankful” and I had to stop myself from tearing up.
Another moment that I found myself close to tears was when we did the coat of arms. Their coat of arms were all unique and interesting and wonderful. They really loved talking about who they were through symbols and it showed me how awesome it would be to do this activity in my own classroom. It is a great way to really get to know those around you without doing a ten hour interview.

Wednesday: Making the Notebook Interactive

This is a big day for us. We spent hours preparing ways to show the teachers how we manipulated the note book in the classroom. I was exceptionally excited to see if they would use it in their own classroom and if they thought it effective. Delaura explained the KWL and the "there was a hole song", I did the word web, flip book and the timeline, Kiki did the word weaver and the accordion, and Dr.Melideo took over the rest. They really liked learning about activities they could do with the weaver. Having the letters hidden to "reveal" this long word was great. I got the chance to show them how to put it in the notebooks. It was challenging standing in front of all those teachers and trying to demonstrate how they can do this in their classroom. The restrictions of not having many resources at my disposal forced my creativity. 

Turns out I'm a regular Macgyver (reference to the mountain climbing expedition: I fashioned a t-shirt into a water bottle holder and a make shift knee brace. snaps!). 

I took the pages of the book and folded them, then made small tears perpendicular to the direction of the fold, I then wrote a word between the folds and showed everyone before doing the next step. Then I wove in the paper and had them guess the word. I explained that this was helpful in two ways; one the student could guess a word similar to the hidden word (ie. mouse, and they guess moose) and compare the two when the hidden word is revealed.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Tuesday

I was surprised to see how much they enjoyed signing! Even more interesting how quickly Delaura and Kiki and I all picked up on it and enjoyed it. The day was a particularly warm one. It may have been because of my sunburn but I was feeling the heat that day. I remember my shirt touching the top of my shoulders and causing me great discomfort. The sun near the equator is more intense than I thought. The others in the room didn't seem to notice the heat. Dr. Melideo was signing bathroom. She showed them the sign and had them repeat. She explained that it was a great way to have the students send a message without disrupting the class that they needed to use the restroom. The minute she said restroom all the teachers broke out in laughter. It reminded me that having to go "potty" was funny where ever you find yourself. We worked on ways the teacher could increase student engagement that day. Kiki did hop scotch, Delaura did Bingo, and I showed them how to play the headache game. The headache game is a math game. You take three numbers that can be multiplied together for example: 3 x 2 = 6. The cards had 3, 2, and 6 on them. The product or highest number of the three cards had a star, 6*. I played the game with Kiki and Delaura in front of all the teachers. I wasn't as nervous as the first day which helped because I stumbled over the explanation of the game a bit. We each had a card and place the card on our foreheads without looking at the number on the other side. This meant that I could see Delaura and Kiki's card but not my own. Kiki had a 3. Delaura had a 2. I in turn had to use my deduction skills to guess what number was on my forehead. At first I was not sure if they understood the game so breaking the teachers into groups and trying it with them in small groups helped me see where I needed to make my explanation of the game stronger. I'm slowly learning how to explain things in a way that is easy for them to process. The language barrier isn't a huge gap. I think I need to slow down the way I communicate. I may be talking too fast. They really liked the game. When we had them come to the stage and demonstrate the games each of us showed them a lot of the teachers did the headache game... and I think they did a great job of explaining it... which meant with practice they had already mastered the concept and could teach it. I hope they use it in their classrooms. The teachers really appeared to enjoy it!