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Field Placement - Week 1

rlee03's picture

Our group managed to set up a meeting with Ms. S to discuss some questions we had regarding our schedules, and the project that we are planning to do. Ms. S managed to give us a good idea of how this project might work, and she helped rearrange times for us to go to the kindergarten to observe the classroom and kids for a bit. We all went to observe at different times, so we can have a good idea of how their day works. I went to the kindergarten from 8:45-10:45am and observed the first part of their day, which consists of kids choice, recess, and snack time. The kids get to choose what they want to play with, among a good number of activities such as painting, reading, playing doctor, and etc. 

We are meeting up again this Sunday to start planning our project and lesson plans, since by then all of us will have observed different times of the day and have a pretty good idea of how the kindergarten works. We're using google docs and google calanders and also sharing them with the Kindergarten teacher and Ms. S so that they can always comment, suggest, and help us out with our project. But our project is centered around the idea of "growth," and is divided into four parts. We are also hoping to be able to contact an elementary school at Ghana and collaborate with them. For now, we want to have a final end product of an e-book, a hardcopy, and a video. The e-book will be the one that we will be constantly updating, so everyone can follow the project along the way.

Everything right now is still in the process of planning and organizing, but I think we have a great start and hopefully everything will work out great. I think this is a great project for both our class and the Kindergarten. 

Comments

edtech2's picture

sobering thought

Last night one of my cousins that i haven't see since my last visit in Cyprus came to see me. She is a teacher in the middle school. We were discussing the digital media in the classroom, and  I wanted to know how she is using the internet in the classroom. Of course she thinks the internet is a great tool that she uses to help the students learn more efficiently, and make her teaching more interesting and less ardeous as well. She shared with me, an incitent that happened in her classroom a few months ago that prompted her to create a facebook acoount. One of her colleques warned her about a female student in her classroom, that from her sharings in facebook seem to be experiencing social withdrawn and was planning to commit suicide. Her reasoning for this action was that she was not popular enough. She did not have many friends on facebook. My cousin immediately signed in for facebook and was able to help this student. This story made me think of the secondary classroom effect that I had read earlier.  In this istance the internet can be used as a secondary classroom. The though made me very optimistic.

alesnick's picture

This is sobering, indeed.  I

This is sobering, indeed.  I think it's interesting that in this case the elder joined the younger in the online space in order to help.  It suggests the importance of the teacher's flexibility.

alesnick's picture

The idea of the e-book as a

The idea of the e-book as a place for people to follow your evolution is awesome!