Sitation Report 1, for (02/09/11)

Thursday February 10th, 2011 was the first time my partner got to meet and get to know our students. We were able to visit the students during their reading block and see them at work. They were working on a very intriguing activity about the trail of tears. Although I knew their assignment wasn’t relative to ours in any way I still went around to the students and asked them to explain what they were doing. The purpose of this was to get a feel for the different students, their work ethics, and anything specific I may want to know about individual students when working with them. There was on student that I spoke to that was extremely organized, had great handwriting, and the language skills of a mature student. Another student I spoke to seemed to have a rather attention span, I was able to note that it wasn’t the best idea to interrupt him while he was working because it becomes the hardest thing to get him back on task. I saw some students working on computers, I met a girl that was a good writer, and another student that was good at proof reading. In the hour and a half that we spent in the class I was able to think of a number of different jobs the students could have in order to help with our project.
Currently our project is still under construction because the 4th/5th grade team is finishing a unit and getting ready to plan a new one. Cassie Bell and I spoke to the teacher about the realistic time frame we would have to work with the students, but he stated that that was unclear because it was still dependent upon the way the next unit was designed. He mentioned that their meeting to plan the next unit was next week Friday. He said that we were welcome to sit on the meeting to find out exactly what we would be happening in the unit and find out where our project would fit best.
My preliminary findings were that, even though they are older you still have to work just as hard to keep their attention as you do for young children. Our next step would be to determine if one of us could make it to their unit meeting as well as collaborate with the other forth/fifth grade classes. The next unit that the teacher will be planning for is learning about the constitution. The social madia network that the students has chosen will be used to basically translate The Constiution in a more kid friendly manner and more relatable to a younger audience. The reason we felt that this was a good idea is because not people know what the constitution is about because it looks intimidating and looks as if it wouldn’t relate to many people. Hopefully, we can gain more insight from the forth/fifth grade team meeting and be able to make more concrete plans for our projects’ next step.