Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Audacity tutorial

Gobble gobble dribble dribble!

This was a very exciting week at St. Mary's because it was leaning towards Thanksgiving break so that was our theme. It was very fun because everyone was getting into the holiday spirit. Nate and I were in the Special project group so we didn't get a chance to work with the kids that much. For our project we had to put together posters of all of the collages we made for St.Mary's and post them up where everyone can see them. I liked doing this because i saw what everyone had to offer in their collages and extremely appreciated the collages that had me in them doing stuff because that showed me that other people observed and liked what i was doing with the kids. Later on during lab when we got finished we went in the gym to see what everyone was doing and it put a smile on my face to see kids that i worked with previously came up to me and asked me to play with them. The majority of the kids were from the the 1-4 grade who came up to me. I had to tell them to wait until next week so we can play again and they didn't want to hear that. At the end i had to do a dance and a cheer. The song was the chicken dance but i just changed it to the turkey dance for the task that was provided. First i made sure they all knew what the chicken dance was and if they can do all the moves first then i transitioned over to doing the whole dance and walking around the circle with them. After that was over we brought it in and made them say HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! overall it was a fun lab and now i can't wait for the Christmas lab!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Trick or Throw

This week our theme at St.Marys was Halloween! Many people dressed up using their creative minds and had some really great costumes. I decided to dress up as a baseball player. I thought that it was a good idea since we were introducing the throwing unit. I had a couple holes in my pants which I quickly joked around and said iI was a zombie baseball player and the kids really liked that. I had the middle schoolers for my lab and they were quite the handful. We started outside and they were playing kickball. I learned fast that you can't talk to them as if you were talking to a kid at a younger level. I remember when I was in middle school and to be honest I was a little mouthy myself. When we got inside there wasn't that many kids so we had to do the best with what we had. As soon as we got inside they all started doing their own thing and not really paying attention so I ended up using a technique saying that If they played my game first they can get back to what they were doing. I based my game on an actual sport (baseball) and made them do various forms of throwing with different balls. They enjoyed that because they were at the age of knowing how to do the tasks at hand and wanted to throw the balls even harder and further which made me happy because I could extend the game as much as I wanted. Without Professor Yang there I think the Grad Assistants did a wonderful job and we'll be excellent teachers soon. Now it's time to get ready for the next lab!