Monday, August 17, 2009

Getting to Know You

Keri Lambert lead a discussion on the importance of getting to know your students. Although many teachers spend the first week getting to know their students' names and personalities, this tends to fall by the wayside as the year progresses. List one activity that you will employ at the beginning of the year to get to know your students' personalities and learning styles. Then share one way that you will attempt to continue this process of getting to know your students throughout the school year. Finally, since we are all still trying to get to know YOU. Please share one or two sentences about yourself so that we may get to know you better, as well.

9 comments:

  1. A couple of days after the conference, I had the chance to read through the Getting-to-Know-You Activities Packet submitted by the SURN Teacher Content Specialists. There are so many new ideas that I want to try out on the first week, but one that really caught my attention was the ALL ABOUT ME!! Paper Bag (page 15). This will give the students a chance to really put some thought and creativity into what they want me as their teacher and their classmates to know about them. My science course runs by semester so I plan to incorporate these types of activites at least once or twice a week. Just call me the Singing-Mad Scientist. I love bursting out into songs as we learn different topics. Sometimes the students think my songs are full of popcorn!! I decided to major in Biology after reading up on Genetics and related topics such as Cloning!!

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  2. I was thinking of starting the year off with the Bio Poem that was shown to us at the conference. I believe this will help me learn more about my students and allow them the opportunity to become more acquainted with each other. I also liked the All About Me activity and was thinking of how I could use it later on in the year. I would have students place several objects in the bag about themsleves so we as a class can continue to share more about ourselves. At the same time, I would have students place objects in the bag that illustrate a recently studied concept. Finally, something interesting to share about myself is that I love animals and recently acquired two beautiful kittens, Shadow and Casper.

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  3. I had the opportunity to look through the different materials that we received from the conference and was feeling a little "overwhelmed" because I had all of these new strategies and activities that I thought were amazing and really want to try and do every single thing that I saw! Then reality set in and I started looking through the Getting to Know You Activities and decided to only use a few things from that packet in the beginning school days.... needless to say the two that stuck out are pg. 14 Getting Sticky and pg 18 Peopele Hunt. Both of these activities are good for ice breakers in the beginning days of school and since I teach Science I also want to promote Group Work and Team Building, which I think that these two activities will fall under that category.

    I hope this year will be exciting as I take on using these strategies!!!! Pray for Me!!!! :*)

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  4. For the Singing Mad Scientist - I just wanted to tell you to check out the book "Science Verse" which was in the set you received at the workshop. It has great ideas and tunes for topic introductions. Please check it out!

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  5. I learned so much about my colleagues at the conference when we created the literacy timelines and shared them. I think it would be an invaluable tool to get to know your learners and preassess their rich experiences with literacy or lack thereof.

    As an avid reader myself, it was interesting to trace where this love began for me. By the way, I just finished Lisa See's Shanghai Girls; it was fabulous!

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  6. Kelly-

    I know it can be very overwhelming when so much information is presented in such a short time period. I love the people hunt activity because it can also work as an an instructional activity throughout the year which allows the students to become actively engaged with the content. Best of luck with the school year! I know it will be great!

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  7. Thanks Keri! Even though I'm a bit overwhelmed I am still excited about implementing these strategies into my daily lessons. I know that it's going to be a great year!!!

    Thanks again and you do the same!!

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  8. As I took some time to read through the Power Tools textbook, I immediately became interested in the Student Learning Survey (p. 5). I like it because there is an array of topics and that the students choose from. This will give me a really good idea of the student's likes and dislikes....not only academically, but also personally.

    Throughout the year, I think a good way to continue the process of getting to know the students is to pass out the survey monthly, and have the students re-read it, and ask themselves if anything have changed. If so, they can change their answers in a different color, if not, they can just leave the answer alone. This way, I can get a feel for how my students are changing and they can too.

    As for me, my name is Eritt Sinkko, but please call me Woody (my middle name is Woodrow). I am the Department Chair for Social Studies at Ruffner Academy (I get the joy of working with the talented Sarah Harvey!!!!!! GO SARAH!!!!!!!!!). This will be my 5th year teaching and my 2nd year as a department chair. Please wish me luck!

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  9. Thanks, Sarah. I have browsed the Science Verse Picture book. Looking forward to using it in my Literacy Lesson Plan as well as with other topics!!

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