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Caldwell's Journal
7/6/04
In
my initial summer session at the Star W training,
and as a new member of the group, I was very excited about the possibilities
that the training will afford me as a classroom teacher. As
a 5th grade teacher who has been part of a team where I taught only
certain subjects, it is clear that this project will enhance my
ability to both motivate and educate my students.
We
were introduced to a problem solving technique, The Big6.
This is a method whereby the problem solving process is clearly
delineated as well as the all the skills needed to achieve success
are outlined. Although many of the steps we are already doing, clearly
identifying which step we are on does require a solid understanding
of the back ground information. Our presenter, Art, provided
opportunities to practice what we learned as well we were shown
how this particular process is extremely beneficial in helping this
children with learn how to think in a succinct fashion.
The
day ended with receiving our lap top computers and learning how
to operate them as asses the sites that we will begin to utilize.
The day was filled with animated discussion and learning.
7/7/04
Today,
our instructor provided information that supported why using The
Big6 would be invaluable to us as teachers to aide us in
constructing the underpinning required to help children to understand
how to problem solve. Although there was much discussion,
the teachers as a whole felt that this process did have it's
benefits.
Later
we were able to work on lessons for september that will utilize
some of the technology we have developed. The third and fourth
grade teachers were extremely helpful getting started, since we
are all new to the StarW Program. We had fun exploring
and sharing the activities we developed.
7/8/04
We
worked on creating a web based activity. There are so much
information that you need to know in order to create an effect web
quest. The presenter provided a detailed , step by step process
how to locate the information of of the web, and how to determine
whether the site is good or not, the newer teachers were shown how
to bookmark our our favorite picks to be retrieve site at a later
date.
We
were shown how to access WEB and FLOW
7/9/04
Today
we learned how to access information from the various
hot list on the topic of bullying. We all looked and investigated
two web sites and evaluated their usefulness. The findings were
shared with the groups and we decided which web addresses were valuable
or not. A community list was created and adopted by all present.
There
was much discussion around what our end result would be, however,
several teachers were not concerned with the process and that seemed
problematic for others. This issue was not resolved, there
were two caps of thoughts. By the afternoon, the NEA was contacted
by one of the group members to tape our program. We are anticipating
that this would not be ready for observation until January or February.
This will undoubtedly apply additional pressure to create an acceptable
product.
7/12/04
The
focus today was on developing an I-movie that our
group developed around that topic our group selected on bulling.
We created a short vignette that would reflect some of this problems
we encounter as classroom teachers. So, a video was shot that
would provide a visual of the issue we were analyzing.
The
starW teacher group was able to watch and react to our video.
It proved to be a great learning opportunity in many ways.
Our group came up with an idea to tract discipline problems and
the interventions that had been applied to see what works and works.oday
we had
8/16/04
Today
we had a representative from the iMac company to
familiarize us with our new laptops. Lynn Blaton proved to be a
wealth of experience and was very knowledgeable. She knew
all the applications and was able to demonstrate the" how to's"
in a way that was so easy to learn and her teaching methods were
clear, concise and made us feel that we had learn the material presented.
Moreover, the printed material was practical and was written in
a way that was easy to comprehend. This was a great workshop,
one of the best yet. Keep them coming!
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