Collaboration & Spanish/English Books

A note about Collaboration experienced today was that I might have to take a large section of a cooperating teacher's unit to integrate informational literacy skills as well as what is important in the curriculum for the subject.

Taking one aspect of their large curriculum kills too much time.

It has also been observed that there is a need for more Spanish & English together in books. I think that it would be good to have the same Spanish and the same English in one book as well as one story infused with both languages.

I am going to look into this issue to see what resources I can find.

I have also observed a social studies class in which constructivists methodologies of integrating many styles of learning occurred but there was the freedom of choice involved too. Of course, technology in this instance, helped make the students' commercials successful and fun and interesting. I believe technology can have made other students' projects more successful if they used it as well as their creative songs used.

This brings about a sensitive area where we do not want to loose the singing and creative strategies the students are using and just train them to be technical about everything.

Perhaps not grading on the use of technology but the content and how well the learned message was taught on part of the students and how well of a job they did presenting their lesson to the class would be a good agenda for a teacher who has to grade with several methods. Being an observer in this instance, I liked that 2 student groups that did not use technology used a song and transformed it into a lingo for their social studies assignment. This was well applauded by me as well as the technology savvy group because of the way it was received by me. Of course, what should be most important is how much they learned about the project and how much their performance helped the class...Then again, that technology project invigorated energy and excitement through the classroom. I believe this is significant in maintaining interest about ancient civilizations.

I will begin this Internship on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 at 9:00 a.m. I will be in the media center for 5 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am looking forward to this experience!