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Ms. Castaldi's
Journal
7/7/04
We are finally up and
working! We are in a STAR-W workshop for 2 weeks. The
workshops are all day and we will complete 80 hours this summer.
The workshop consists of 3rd, 4th, 5th, Dr. Loper, Art, and Marilyn.
The techs came today and hooked us up to the internet.
I am excited to learn new things. Yesterday, Art, our mentor,
introduced us to the Big 6 problem solving techniques. I think
it's a great technique and it would benefit all of us to be on the
same page. I am looking forward to creating some projects.
I want to create things that we can use for the school year.
I understand learning the process, but knowing our group, we like
to learn something and then use. Yesterday, Art showed us a
great little lesson. I love the idea of downloading a bunch
of pictures and then the students will create stories from the pictures.
I am looking forward to implementing this lesson next year.
7/8/04
Day 3 of training!
My wish sure was granted. Yesterday we were hooked up on the
internet, and Art just left us go! We created pages from 11:30
am till time to go. It was an extremely productive day.
The fourth grade teachers decided to collaborate and share pages.
I think this is team teaching perfected. We all love
using the computers in our classroom. We have found that our
children love working on the computer and having productive things
for them to do is extremely important to us. Today Art introduced
us Web-and-Flow. This takes a lot of time. We are not
through his lesson, I am sure he'll finish tomorrow. I have
found that many quests are already made and I am sorting through
to find good ones to link to our monthly pages. I am so excited
about incorporating all of this next year. I am getting nervous
about our Bully's to Buddies project. We haven't touched on
it yet. I would love to get the books we have for our classroom,
or at least a copy from the library, and start creating lessons
revolved around them.
7/9/04
Our first week is over.
These are long days and my eyes are beginning to hurt! Today,
we searched for some sites that we can use for our Bullies to Buddies
project. It is all very overwhelming. We are trying
to get focused and organized. It is a lot of work, but worth
it in the long run. We found some really great sites for the
kids to play interactive games and make good decisions. We
are all working very hard. In the beginning 80 hours sounded
like a lot of hours, but now I wonder if we will really have a curriculum
finished by the time our training is over. This will be an
ongoing project that will always need some attention. I am
excited to get started and actually create activities to use in
the classroom.
7/12/04
Today was productive.
It seems that whenever Art poses a question we all shout out things
and ideas come about. We came to the idea to use an Excel
program and documenting the students behavior. I think it
will be a great tool to use and see the kids success with the Bullies
to Buddies program. We also organized our beginning of the
year activities. My group wrote up a lesson plan on video
taping the kids and interviewing them on different things about
bullying. We came up with the questions, after the program
at the end of the year, we will video tape them again and ask them
the same quesitons. We are hoping they will show growth in
their knowledge about bullying. We also came to the idea to
role play different scenerios and have the kids write about different
solutions. Hyland, Bell, Fleming, Smith, and I made a little
movie. It was a lot of fun! We made different stop points
and questioned the kids on what they would do if they were in this
circumstance. We also got word that the state is interested
in documenting our story and come do a video about it. This
will be great recognition.
Tomorrow
is my birthday!
7/13/04
They say it's
your birthday.......
Yup, it's my birthday
and I have been sitting in STAR W training ALL day! We got
a lot finished today. We broke up into 3 groups again and
we each picked jobs. My group completed an outline for our
Bullies to Buddies kickoff. We want to have it in the beginning
of the year. We wrote a B2B rap that the teachers will perform
for the students. We want to have an upbeat pep rally to motivate
the kids to be good buddies this year, not bullies. We have
an agenda and a flyer to send home to the parents. We also
retaped our scenario, but we all like the first one the best.
iVideo is too confusing to me right now! I hope to learn it,
but I need some formal training.
7/14/04
In the morning today Bob
taught us how to use the Dana's more in our classroom. This
was most helpful! We also taped another role playing skit.
It was really funny! I look forward to editing the skit and
making a movie.
7/15/04
Today I learned how to
do iMovie. I cut our skit and tried to copy it together to
make it smooth. It was not as tough as I thought it would
be. I am getting a little nervous about what is being accomplished
with our project. In the beginning and our Saturday trainings
I thought we had all agreed that our focus would be to organize
lessons revolved around our Bullies to Buddies program. Today
Jen said that she would go to the library to pick up some books
for our grant. We think it is essential to have some activities
created before September. We'll see what we do next.
7/16/04
OH MY GOODNESS!
Talk about getting some work finished today! I don't
think I have worked as hard as I did today. I feel that I
completed so many activities. First we made three writing
activities for a book about bullying. We have like 25 questions
about the book that we separated into three different activities.
Raina finished one for a book that she read also. I feel that
these will be extremely helpful for next year. Raina also
created so many writing prompts revolved around bullying.
I went in and just helped her by adding some pictures and things
like that. We are really creating some great unique activities
for our students to do next year. Jen is working very hard
at trying to change our way of dealing with discipline. She
has some wonderful ideas, I know that she will be successful.
Dr. Loper learned how to create writing prompts. We are so proud
of him! I can hardly believe that we only have 1 more day
of training. I feel that this was a very successful day!!!
7/19/04
Today is our last day
of STAR W training. These 2 weeks flew by. Today was
a very very productive day. It is the first day that I feel
we have all truly collaborated and came up with
some great organizational techniques. We were all working
very hard to create things that we can all use. Of coarse
some of us will have to tweak activities for our different levels
of readers, but we were working together. Our new B2B
page is organized with everything that we have created in these
2 weeks. I feel so much better about our project now.
At first I really did not think that we would be as prepared as
we are now. I feel that the best tool that we have is the
knowledge of using Contribute. Without this software I really
do not think that we would be as successful as we are! It
is allowing us to create unique activities for our children to complete.
The past few days that we have been able to create has been most
beneficial to us. It is less work that we will have to do
during the school year. It is funny though, all of us have
been working on B2B activities, none of us are really working on
things that does not apply to this project. This proves to
me that we are all extremely eager to implement this project within
our classrooms. Thanks Marilyn for this unbelievable opportunity
and Arty Art---You're the MAN! Wish us luck as we enter YEAR 2 of
Star W!
8/18/04
This summer has been crazy!
We have learned so much! Today and yesterday we have been
training with people from Apple. They are teaching us how
to use our new ibooks. It is very intense. There is
so much to learn. This has been a great experience though.
Today I edited our "Buddy Brook" movie.
It took forever becuase it is so much. I am glad that we were
given this training.
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