When Things Don't Go As Smoothly As Expected...

My Favorite Animated Movie: Monsters Inc.

On Friday February 15, 2013 fieldwork was a little different than usual. The fourth grade class came to Mount Saint Mary College for their fieldwork session. I feel that this although was not the best situation for our companies. The students were intrigued by the computers, wheelie chairs and different atmosphere that it was hard to get the students to focus and pay attention to the teachers at the front of the room. After a little guidance the students did begin to listen to the teachers. The lesson started off by reviewing terms such as capital, negotiate, pitch, venture capitalist. I thought that the introduction for the students was one of the best parts of the lesson. For the intro the group of teachers showed clips from their favorite movies. I thought this was a great way to get the students motivated and excited to make their own movies.  The goal with this inquiry lesson was to get the students to explore their video making tools and work on producing their movies. I found that this was hard for my group of students because they didn't know how to properly cooperate with one another. The major issue were that my company was not able to work together to make decisions about their movie. When my company wasn't cooperating I had to use a piece of paper as the “talking card” so that only the person who was currently holding the card was allowed to talk, while the rest of the company members had to listen. I feel that this helped certain students get their points across without being continuously interrupted. It was hard seeing that a couple students got very upset and emotional about the issues concerning their group. By seeing this it helped me realize that these fourth graders must learn good cooperation skills not only for the sake of this project but for daily life situations. Overall I feel like the lessons are going well, the students’ just need to take the time to listen to their group members.