Still participating in activities in other areas of my life in addition to the daily word count. Enjoying splitting wood, keeping the wood stove burning, heading out on some drizzly walks with Sanford, researching grad schools, keeping up with fruitful email banter with good colleagues and friends.
In school tomorrow we are making our own video that goes with the famous "Monster Mash" song. We storyboarded out all of the scenes, looking line by line at the lyrics of the song to decide what kinds of images we should be filming. We have assigned roles of costume/makeup, director (me for this first movie), actors, cinematographer, editors, choreographer. I even made a clap board with erasable scene and take areas, just to get the full effect.
Our refrigerator box--which was first a spaceship, then a coffin in our Haunted Corner--is now transforming into a robot.
Working on creative projects is a great way to practice multiple skills and to get everyone in the room involved in the same learning activity with each student participating at their own level. It's also nice because students can try on different roles in a project, starting with something they feel comfortable with and branching out as the project continues, or on the next similar project. And the talk amongst the students is AMAZING! Sometimes I just sit back with a pencil in hand to record all the intelligent ways they are solving real-life problems that arise as they work. I am proud that they now ask each other for help rather than running immediately to the adult in the room (me) to mediate the situation. When this happened at the start of the year I tried to respond with, "well, I'm not sure how we could fix that. Let's bring it up with the group to see if we can solve it together." I tried to then model how to ask for everyone's ideas and talked my thinking out loud as I considered all the options that were suggested. Ultimately the solutions, whenever possible, came from the students, rather than from me, and I hope this showed them that they really do have the ability to solve complex issues if they work cooperatively as a group. They already hold the knowledge within themselves if they remember to take the time to stop to ask for ideas and to have a discussion about it. It's definitely an ongoing process, but so far this group is great at relying on each other and valuing the input of each member of the group.
In writer's workshop we are working on creating powerful openings. The Ks are working on adding details to their stories, and on listening for the sounds of things in their pictures and matching those with letters they know and copying words from around the room. Very fun with children, who still have much of their imaginative spark in tact. They are also incredibly good at "thinking outside of the box", for lack of a more original phrase. Or, as in our case, they are good at thinking both inside the boxes, and out of them. (Hahaha... aren't I funny? Get it?)
Sweet dreams all. Thanks for taking the time in your busy day to be interested in what I am up to. I do appreciate it :)
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