Roman Explores Creativity: Reflection for the week of October 23rd

So last week I did not get to teach my lesson for our peer-to-peer, which was an unexpected glitch in my overall plan. However it did give me more time to look at my lesson and refine it. Monday was a day of prep. I had to wait till Wednesday to give my lesson. In the mean time I got my camera ready to record KJ's lesson on Tuesday. For this lesson, I had to make sure that I listen to what KJ says so that my follow on lesson would match hers. It was also important to listen carefully to KJ's lesson because I had to evaluate her. This was not an easy task because I try to be open minded and excepting of a persons thought process, this makes me sometimes grade leniently
. She is covering the first half of the book and focusing on plurals whereas I'm covering the second half of the book and focusing on compound words. We are both focusing on comprehension but separately focusing on areas the students are struggling with in class. My compound word work would allow them to learn how to decode and learn how compound words work. After the word work we read the book and I asked questions as we read so that they worked on recall. At the end I had them take their project from Tuesday and turn it into a game board. the key was used to know what questions to ask when they landed on certain spots. It was a fun lesson and from how the students reacted they had fun and were not bored.

Game board made from a map of a school. Each white card is a specific room or place.

On the 24th I went to New Mountain Hill to participate in the STEAM night. I had so much fun and got to see so many super intelligent kids. I was put in the spaghetti tower room and I thought at first that this was gonna be a uneventful activity. Instead it became one of the most fun and interesting activities according to some of the parents I talked with. At this activity not only did the students participate but we had parents helping the kids so that they understood how to build strong structures. I even helped one boy who was lost build a structure that many said was impressive because it had no truly vertical pieces. I thought this event would slow down but we had people still building at 20 minutes to 8pm. we then cleaned up and left all of us talking about the structures the kids built.