So this Friday I took a trip to Agnor-Hurt to meet with my TIP teacher and observe her in the classroom with her students. Ms. Ingram teaches many different students from different grade levels. When I came in she was with a group of four third graders reading a book. I watched and listened as she carefully guided them through the book. She had to refocus their attention a lot by asking them to point to specific words and stay on the same page she was on.
Then I met Ms. Ingram's first graders, the group I will be working with on the TIP project. They are all very cute. She only has them for thirty minutes a day and the time flies. She chooses a different student each day to decide what shape they will sit in on the floor. The student she chose had us sit in a circle. Then the students went around in the circle and said their names and the language they spoke at home. The majority were Spanish-speakers, but there was an Arabic-speaker and a Korean-speaker.
Then the children got up and sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" first slowly then more quickly. Lastly, Ms. Ingram had them sit at a small group table and start reading a book together about animal body parts.
One of the things I learned from this visit is that Ms. Ingram is a very passionate and lovely teacher with a lot of energy and pizzazz. I had a great time watching her interact with her students. I got a better sense for where the students are with their language ability. However, I also learned that 30 minutes is an incredibly short amount of time. I got a few books from Ms. Ingram that I can borrow and use for my lesson.
I am meeting with her again tomorrow morning at 8:15 to talk about our lesson plans more in depth. Considering the age group and time limitations I think that I am only going to be able to implement one type of technology. I hope that VoiceThread will be easy enough to use with 1st graders.
I think that it is perfectly fine to only use one type of technology. Just make a note of this in your contract/proposal.
ReplyDeleteI think that you are going to need to carefully scaffold VT for these students, but I do think that it is a real possibility. Now that you have a better sense of the class and students, how would you begin to flesh out your lessons and use of technology?