Scientific Meeting of the Minds...

Feeling overwhelmed but we finally had our first night of class. We started off by meeting our After-School Science Program students and completing the pre-assessment worksheet. Our group will scan them tomorrow and upload them so that our class can review them.

In class this week, we worked with the children on a "Get to Know You" project in which our group had the students go around their circle, roll the dice and answer the corresponding question to their number on the dice. Our questions included personal questions about the students such as "How many pets do you have," "Do you like to read?" and "Do you play sports?" We also included some general questions about the Solar System and the planets. At one point we asked the students in each group if we could play with them too, they seemed excited at the aspect of learning something about us as well.

It was a fun project which allowed us to start building a relationship with the students. I find this will be helpful in the future as a teacher in doing these types of projects to create relationships with my students. Our group also made a list of some of the students who were chattier with particular peers and took away from the assignment. We will utilize this for assigned seats during lessons. I was surprised to learn that most of the students favorite subject were math.

Some other observations among the student teachers were that, again, some children had more energy than others and were disruptive at times. Some children were much more outgoing than others, while some sat quietly until called upon others continued to talk. The knowledge level of some children varied quite a bit. And the details presented by some students were quite extensive for some students while others had one-word answers.

Tonight I'm working on choosing a Science Fair project, and tomorrow our group is meeting to do a final review of our lessons before next class. I can't remember the last time I participated in a Science Fair, oh, I haven't! Another first for me.