Reflection 09/13/08

I really liked the first article I read, which was the one about helping boys enjoy literature by reading them picture books and regular books with Archetypes. I think that if we find boys or girls that we notice are having a problem in a certain area, especially reading we can really find an archetype that would help this student, and read and discuss the book with them. If we are helping them implement the characteristics that the books give in more situations throughout the day then it can help them even more. I loved that she tied the importance of visual literacy into the article, because I had to read another article for a different class talking about the importance of visual literacy. I think it will be interesting to hear the views and interpretations people have about the two different articles that were read

Week three

I can't believe the three weeks are already over, it makes me so sad! our class was so well behaved and so much fun! this week was fun, we got to actually teach social studies for the teacher that does the social studies in the rotations, it was fun. we did the civil war. we really only had two lessons to cover it in, the third one was an extra for just our class and not the whole rotation. it was neat, because I felt like the kids were really taking in what we were teaching them, it made me really excited to be a teacher. Our technology lesson was supposed to be a web quest but when the kids downloaded it from our uen page, the Provo School District took the hyperlink off the the buttons, so it turned into a similar research project, looking at the tasks we gave them, and the sites we gave them, and any other they could find. It didn't go at all the way we had planned, but I think the students still got a lot out of it.

week 2

my second week in the field was neat as well, it feels like I know the students better, I know how the classroom works, and we have had another opportunity to teach. our second lesson was on mountain building and I felt that it went really well, that the students had a lot of fun, and that we were able to get across what we needed to. we taught about the three different ways mountains are formed, we showed an overheaed of the process of each, talked aobut how it worked, then gave them a physcial example. for folded mountains we showed them a paper with pressure on both sides representing the crust and plates pushing and showed how it would buckle, fold, and form mountain ranges. For Fault-block we used 2 boxes one with dirt in it to represent a fault and how a mountain would form when one side of the fault goes up and dirt falls. for volcanic mountains we showed them a picture of a volcano, and for a dome mountain we blew up a balloon to show how the magma would shape the crust, but not break through it. then we had the students write a short explanation for how each type of mountain formation worked. for the formal assessment, we had the students push the desks aside, and we did 2 movement activties for a folded and dome mountains, then split them into groups and had them show us a movement activity that represented either volcanic or fault-block, assigning one or the other to different groups. it was a fun lesson. The time is going by fast and I am loving it

I have loved the first week of being in the 5th grade classroom! for the first couple of days we just watched and helped the kids when they were doing work, and just kind of figuring out how our teacher handles the classroom. he does a money system for rewards and for punishment, he also has a system set up where every student has a job, and it keeps the whole class in working order so I was really impressed with that.
We got the opportunity to teach on Thursday. For Social studies, science, and Language arts, so we actually taught science. Our lesson was on earthquakes, first we showed them a digital story that Bryant made and had them fill out a short worksheet during the video, then we did a seismograph activity where I had made one (a table with a chair on top of it and a string tied the the bottom of the chair and a marker at the other end of the string and paper on the table under the chair that the marker was touching) and showed them how scientist measure the intensity of an earthquake. then the students either made a visual art project on a paper showing one of the types of faults, or built a structure with Popsicle sticks and put it on a "fault" (two Kleenex boxes side by side) to show what the motion of the fault looked like. then each group presented their project with 2 facts about earthquakes.
since they do rotations we taught the lesson three times, the first time it was really crazy and we had to make some adjustments for the next two lessons, we went over the instructions for the projects step by step and had the students tell us after what the steps were, so the next two lessons went a lot smother. anyway, it was really fun and harder than I expected.

Moon Festival

This is my digital story about the chinese legend of the lady in the moon!

Digital Story Reflection

Doing this assignment I learned a lot more about the legend of the moon festival that I had heard bits and pieces of while I was in china, it was fun to put together the pieces I had heard with the many versions I read of the legend to make my story. Most of the technical skills I already knew how to do, but there were a few things I learned, for exaple; how to use Audacity to cut music up to fit the story, how to put the pieces together to make up a digital story, and how to test and make a mic sound better. I learned that to make a digital story you have to have a story first, then find pictures, and finally music to fit both of those, and if you do those in the wrong order then your story won't turn out as good. all in all this was a fun activity that I would definitaly use in the classroom with my future students.

Digital story Script

1. In china there is an autumn festival when the moon is the most beautiful and full, some say there is a lady who lives in the moon.

2. Let’s travel back in time to find the story of why.

3. They say at this time there were ten suns that took turns warming the earth. One day all ten came out and started scorching the earth.

4. The emperor of china commanded Houyi, a great archer, to shoot down all but one of the suns.

5. When he did, as a reward the emperor gave Houyi a pill that gave eternal life, but told him to prepare one year before taking it.

6. Houyi put it in a box and went away for awhile; his beautiful wife Chang’e was curious and looked in the box, when Houyi came back she accidentally swallowed it because she was scared.

7. The pill made her really light and started to float all the way up to the moon.

8. Houyi was so sad he made himself a palace on the moon until he could find a way to get her down.

9. They say that the moon festival is the only time of year that Chang’e gets to see her husband Houyi so that is why the moon is so big and beautiful on that night.

10. Now we travel back to the present, we see that this night when the moon is the biggest each year families get together eat a big meal and watch the moon together.