Video Fun

Hello,

Yesterday was a productive but enjoyable class.  To start off, we had conferences and went over our rough drafts for our final written piece.  This was very useful for me because both Lindsey and Rachel gave me feedback about my children's book.  They helped me come up with ideas to make my book better as well as guide me with ideas that I had been stuck on.  I feel that I gave good constructive feedback to both of my partners as well.  The best part of class was constructing our digital movies.  My group is doing our movie on Christmas.  Our video is getting me very excited for the holidays.  I think making digital movie in a classroom is a wonderful idea.  It gives students a chance to work with technology as well as using their own creativity.

It is sad that the semester is coming to an end.  I am finally starting to feel comfortable with my classroom at University and now we are going to be leaving.  I wish the placement was longer.  I would really benefit from spending more time in one classroom.  I feel like I am starting to understand students strengths and weaknesses and wish I could be there for a longer amount of time.

Have a great break everyone!

Marisa

...Social Issues...

Hi all,

During class yesterday, we focused much of our time on social issues in our community.  This activity had my full attention because it was something that interested me.  I was surprised when Linda told us what the example picture was.  At my first glance, I thought it was a list of family names for the dispense of food.  I was under the assumption that there was a natural disaster and they were in desperate need of food.  Once I found out that the list was for medication for HIV positive patients, I was dumb founded.  I knew that HIV and AIDS was a huge concern in Africa, but I never understood how desperate people were to get help.  This picture is extremely upsetting because if you think about it, not all people in Africa are able to get the medication.  How does one choose who gets it and who doesn't?  What happens to the people and families who aren't fortunate to get the vaccination?

I did my social issue on homelessness.  I am originally from Philadelphia and this has also been a concern of mine for a long time.  Living in Bloomington, I have also seen the impact of homelessness on the community.  I work at Village Deli, which is not far from the public bus station and the public library.  Every time I drive to work, I am surprised by how many homeless people I see.  Bloomington is definitely different than the city of Philadelphia because I feel that homeless people in b-town are accepted.  There are countless shelters and soup kitchens for such a small town.  Compared to inner city Philly, there are not nearly as many options and there are triple the amount of homeless people.  I volunteered at a soup kitchen during high school and was taken back by the stories that I heard from the homeless people.  Many of the people had families and were trying to provide for their children.  There was a family that I encountered that lost their house because they could not afford it.  The mother worked at walmart but could not pay rent.  Her and her two young children were living out of their car.  This is definitely a social concern of mine that needs to be taken seriously.


Marisa
 

Project Fair

During class last week, we had our project fair.  I thought this was a great way to share with the class our 5 genres.  I was excited to share about my topic and get feedback from my classmates.  Doing a project fair enables students to learn a little bit about all of the topics without having to read through 29 papers (which is unrealistic).  I was surprised with how many different topics were represented in our class.  The wide range of topics made the project fair more interesting and it was fun to hop from one topic to another.

Last Wednesday at University may have been the most productive day I have had yet.  I felt like I was able to work with my kidwatching child as well as work with many other students who needed extra help.  One student in my class needed help on a reading and writing assignment and I thought I did a great job working with her.  I reread a story with her that she had already read by herself.  After we read the story together, she had questions that she needed to answer.  We broke up each question into smaller pieces which helped her to understand it better.  I also helped her with understanding how to answer a question in full sentences.  By the end of the questions, she was answering them all by herself and answering the questions with full detail.  I was very proud of her and myself.

Great Day!

--Marisa