Well I thought that I was going to be my grandmother for my chautauqua presentation, but todays activity left me in a blubbering mess!!  I need to find a character who is light, airy, outgoing, and FUNNY!!  Maybe I will be my mother instead.

 

March 6, 2008

I enjoyed meeting in our reading group today.  I loved talking about the author's purpose behind writing the stories and also talking about the characters point of view within the story.  We all made personal connections with one or more of the stories and were able to share our experiences within our group.  I love doing literature circles and cannot wait to have my future students do them as well.  I also enjoyed listening to everyones ideas about their chautauqua characters.  I cannot wait to meet them all next Thursday! 

 

March 13, 2008

Man that was nerve racking!!  I was so nervous I just skipped to the end!!  Now I know to slow down and take one step at a time.  I can't even remember what I said or how I said it.  I thought that everyone did an amazing job presenting their characters.  It was a pleasure to meet them all. .     

It was a great honor to meet the kids today.  I'm working with Colton, Brianna, and Arilieze.  We worked on brainstorming our characters physical features, smells, expressions, stories the characters told, how they presented their stories, and common languages the characters used.  Spanish is spoken within Arilieze's home and she wants to use her language within her story; which is wonderful!  Colton is pretty set on being his Papa Jose.  Arilieze has two characters in mind, she either wants to be her mom, or her older sister.  Brianna has three characters in mind, she's thinking about being her brother, or her niece, or Mrs. Brashaw.  I encouraged the students to brainstorm each character, and then choose the character they knew most.  I asked they students to get to know their characters over spring break, and to interview family members to find more details about their characters.  When we meet again, depending on what the kids did over spring break, we will choose our characters and start brainstorming ideas and details that will help us bring our characters to life.  I liked the idea behind having the students draw a picture of their character and then free write a little story.  I will let the kids choose what they would like to do.           

Today was a little challenging.  There was something going on with one of my students and I'm not sure what.  Trying to get the students to focus in on what we were doing was quite impossible.  They seemed to not care at all.  I will see how their behavior is next week and maybe having them meet for peer conferencing will open their minds to what we are supposed to be doing.   

Today was so exciting!!  Letting the students know that we were going to have peer conferences with another group helped get the ball rolling.  The students also did some homework.  They all came back with stories they wanted to share and so I jotted their stories down as they were telling them.  I was unaware until last week that one of the students was very intimidated by having to write.  So, helping them get their stories on paper took a lot of weight off of their shoulders.  All three students had fun with their characters today and I cannot wait untill next week.  We are going to work on slowing down when telling our stories and adding more details so that our audience will be able to follow along. The students enjoyed meeting with the other group and giving stars and wishes so we are going to do the group work again next week.  We might go ahead and record their performance next week as well just to give them an idea of how it's going to be because they are all pretty nervous about the whole process.  Plus it will give them an opportunity to critique their own performance.  We'll see how this turns out next week. 

Today, was again, a little challenging.  Students seemed tired and uninterested in their chatauquas.  I immediately moved from the facilitator role to being more of an enthusiast.  When the students saw my enthusiasm they started to chime in a little more.  We worked on speaking up when presenting, and adding more details to our story so that our audience will be able to follow along with ease.  This still needs some practice so we will pick up where we left off next week.