Study+Groups

Study Groups

Study Group Number 2: Plan for the week of 02/08 to 02/15. Karen: Chapter 5 Classification What do you wish you understood better. Laurie: Practice of Tic Tac Toe to assess spatial orientation for handwriting Betsy: Use the conservation kits with small group. Fabienne: Activities to help students develop memorization. Marybeth: What do you wish you understood better. Jennifer: Introduce the beautiful thought exercise. Expand on visualisation. Hilary: Help students to sit at circle: spatial awareness.

-Cheryl plans on doing the "Beautiful Thoughts" exercise during her Writing Workshop lesson this week. She may focus it more on a specific topic.
==== -Joanna worked on this exercise with 4th and 5th graders. Before beginning the exerccise, Joanna modeled the it. Students wrote about their favorite food to eat. The students used their senses and extremely descriptive phrases and words to describe the food. The group then turned the writing into an advertisement incorporating advertising skills and money. She feels it worked with her group and they will be posting this work in the classroom. Joanna may also use this exercise to have her students write "letters of complaint". ==== ==== -Lauren-This past week, Lauren tried to discuss the concept of love. They talked about how they show love with families (giving hugs). Lauren observed a student in the class giving hugs to the adults and saying he loved them. ==== ==== -Joyce-Joyce had an experience in her class where the children tried to figure out why Joyce put out new chalk. The children initially said it was because the chalk broke, when in reality, it had been worn down. Joyce worked with a small group of kids to experience writing and drawing with chalk to see that it became smaller and smaller with use. Eventually, the children realized the chalk was replaced because it had gotten too short to use. She may do this again with crayons and compare it to chalk. ====

Study Group 2 / 2/15/11

Members discussed the experiences we each had incorporating one of Betty Garner's cognitive structures/ideas into our classrooms.

Karen- asked a group of students to answer the question, "What do you wish you could understand better ?" in a journal entry. Students answered in a variety of ways, some academic and some personal. All displayed mindfulness and gave insight into each child's thinking. A few of the answers received: 1) "Why my mom and dad broke up when I was little, that just gets me angry!" 2) "How others think more clearly, why there is not gravity in space, physics and why I am hungry at 9:00am." 3) "Other people, infinite understanding, the center of the earth, calculus, myself. It seems so impossible to have something go on forever and I get dizzy when I think about it too hard." 4) " A person's soul, what does it do after a person dies? Does it go to a different person, a baby being born? Does it exist?"

Betsy- began using an assessment kit with some of her students. She presented the materials in the kit and shared some of her findings. Then we discussed possible methods of presenting the exercises to children.

Jennifer- experimented with the "beautiful thought" exercise with her pre-schoolers. She was impressed with her students' willingness to participate and their level of reverence during the activity. Children shared their "beautiful thoughts" with the group. When asked what they were thinking about during the reflection, some children answered, "my teddy bear," " Grace & Annie," "my friends," and " the bike I got for my birthday."

Hilary- worked on spatial relations with her toddlers, particulary during circle time. She introduced mats for each child to carry and sit on for circle. She will continue to use this method to assess it's effectiveness.

Laurie- also introduced some of her students to a spatial relations exercise. She presented her students with a "tic tac toe" structure using rulers to assess their understanding of top left, top middle, top right, middle left, middle middle and middle left, etc. She will continue these types of activities with her students using a variety of different factors, including how children might relate when the structure in rotated.

Fabienne introduced some of her students to being self-aware that memorization is a crucial part of learning. She has started to think about how to teach memorization as a study skills. We brainstorm the idea to give students a list of vocabulary to take home with suggestion on how to improve memorization. Students would have to create a memorization activity that suit their learning style to memorize the list. They would come back the following week, sharing their activities ( a game, a story, gestures, a wordsearch, a dance......) and explain to the group how it helps them to memorize the French vocab. The vocabulary will be then used in differnet context in the classroom ( skits, oral communication activities.ect...) Students will also be able to practice the activity with a partner during class time.

Study Group 2 March 1, 2011 meeting Next week we will bring our cultural notebooks to begin to form assesssments based on the three cognitive structures listed in Betty Garner's Getting to got it. Comparative Thinking Symbolic Representation Logical Thinking.