This past field experience was one that was more relaxed than others. We spent a portion of the time outdoors on the playground during their bonus recess time. This at first seemed irrelevant to things inside the classroom, but I began to notice who each of the students were hanging around out on the playground, as well as what kinds of things they did while outside. It was interesting to see that the playground was almost exactly divided in half; boys on one side playing soccer, and girls on the other side on the equipment. I took the time to notice how my kidwatching student was interacting with the other students. She seemed to be laughing and playing along with a big group of girls all of whom were interacting with the other sixth grade teacher. This was good to see that she was being with friends, and having a nice time.

In class we began working on our digital stories. Our group decided to create a digital story based around "how to make a pb&j sandwich." I will be interested to see how all of these turn out. I attempted to create one in W200 last year, however, I became frustrated with Window's Movie Maker, and hastily rushed through. Needless to say, I did not do very well on the project. Hopefully this time I will do better.

November 10th class and Field Experience

During my November 10th field experience, I struggled with helping a student with his grammar. I felt very bad, and disappointed in myself that I could be a great help to him, because I did not know the material myself. His teacher said that he had been asking if someone could help him with his grammar for a while, so I took him in the hall with his worksheet. When he would ask specific questions about sentence structure etc. I did not know how to answer his questions. I did the best that I could, and hoped that he got something out of it. This was sort of discouraging, however I realized that there are going to be things that I simply do not know as a teacher. I know that before I teach certain material, I will be going over it, and will be better prepared, but this was just one thing that I could not be as beneficial with.

I am excited to work on a published piece. I think that it is a great idea for students to do something like this, because it allows them to work hard on something, and then feel the accomplishment of seeing it finished and polished. This can give students motivation, because they know they are creating good, and valuable work. They will feel proud to have written and made something that looks great. I think it will be fun to choose something of my own to create this way as well.

Kidwatching Interview

This past field experience, I interviewed my "Kidwatching kid" about her experiences with reading, and writing, and how things such as her family, peers, interests, and self-views came into play for those two things. I really enjoyed this! It gave me a chance to get to know her, and really see things in her perspective. She eventually really opened up to me, more than I thought she might, but I gained a lot of helpful insight to her views on literature. Many of the things she told me were very much like what we have been learning in regards to making literature appealing for students. With that being said, she mentioned things such as really enjoying reading and writing when it is a choice made by her, rather than required. She loved reading fiction and graphic novels, anything that allows her to use her imagination. She said she really loves writing, but only if it allows her to be creative, she does not enjoy writing prompts assigned by the teacher. She enjoys writing in her writers notebook, because she can simply get all of her ideas out without having to be so stringent on editing. All of this I found really interesting, because it was things that I had been learning about in class, and it was being proven in front of my eyes!

The MGRP visuals I found to be great! I was very impressed with all of the posters of those in our class. Not only was I impressed with the visuals and different genres, but simply the topic itself. I thought it was great to see what people felt passionate about in order to create this rather large project. I loved seeing the creativity in the posters, and the creativity of the genres, i enjoyed asking questions, because many of the students seemed to have a really great knowledge of their subject, so it was great to learn about such a wide variety of seemingly random topics.