Last week was my Spring Break so I did not get to visit Tully. I'm not sure what the children were engaged in but I'm sure it was fun! This week they continued their study on Mars. It was a pretty boring day for me because we just went down to the computer lab and the children watched Mars videos on a website provided to them. I was able to help all the kids get logged onto the computers but then I kinda just stood around while they watched the videos. I couldn't hear what the videos were saying since they all had headphones on but the videos did look interesting. It seemed like a very educational site that maybe I will use on my students in the future. Mrs. Podsiedlik informed us that the following two weeks we will not be meeting as next week is Tully Elementary's Spring Break and the following week is Oswego's break which Mrs. P. also teaches at. It will be a nice two weeks off for me even though I think I am going to miss the children. I hope losing these two weeks won't leave me short with my community service hours at the end of the semester. Otherwise, I will have to find other ways to compensate for the hours lost.
The students continued to learn about Mars today. They watched another video and we all learned that it takes 14 minutes for scientists to communicate with the Mars robot. After obtaining this information, Mrs. P. broke up the class into two groups and assigned one group to one activity and the other group to a different one. One of the activities required being blind folded but I wasn't assigned to that activity so I'm not sure what it involved. It probably had something to do with communicating though because that's what the other activity was about also. I was assigned to the activity with the legos. For the lego activity, they had to partner up and one partner sat on one side of a cardboard divider while the other sat on the opposite side. Next someone had to decide to be the robot and the other was the scientist who had to direct the robot to make a spaceship that imitated theirs. It seemed very challenging for them as it was hard for them to hear and follow the directions word for word. I did not intercede, my job was to simply make sure the kids weren't cheating and looking at each other's creations. It was really funny watching them direct each other and when they would miscommunicate and do the wrong task or pick the wrong lego piece. Grace and Anthony were at my station and Anthony was the robot first. In the end their spaceships didn't match up and I pointed out the mistakes that Grace made after they revealed their creations. I then made a few suggestions before they switched roles such as to be very specific with the directions and descriptions of lego pieces. Their communication skills definitely improved the second time around, however Anthony is a very impatient child and it was hard for Grace to keep up with the directions he was throwing at her. Overall, I think this was an effective activity and observing the kids entertained me.
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Julia MooreMy blog helps me to blend readings with my community project experiences. My reflections are based in part on my frequent and ongoing service-learning updates. Archives |