It was great meeting with all of you yesterday. Welcome Crisitan, Juana, Yoceline, Jacqueline, Keith, and Jerry. Welcome back to Emily, Derrick, and Jennifer! (these 3 students participated in last year's weblog project). Luz was absent yesterday but we look forward to meeting her next week!
I can tell we're going to have a great group. We started the day with technology glitches - not Manila though, just wireless problems. We hope to have that all cleared up for next week. We did find a lab that we could use for part of the time and each student had the opportunity to type their thoughts. We did have time to share last year's project with everyone. Then we split into pairs and browsed the students' weblogs from last year. Everyone was excited and looking forward to this year's journey! I asked them to tell a little about themselves and share their initial thoughts. They were eager to do this and got right to work on the computers. I could tell there was a comfort level with all of them working at the computers. For some, I got a little help from my Spanish speaking friends and I in turn wrote the English for them to type- a sort of language-experience type activity.
My goal is to provide lots of practice in writing and providing time for feedback for these up-and-coming writers. This group covers a broad range of learners in that we have some students who are just beginning to acquire English skills and learning to communicate, some whose speaking proficiency is advanced but written expression is weak. Others have fairly good speaking and writing proficiency, but hope to do even better. Of course, we all know we can improve and that's what we want to do. We want to take a learning journey where we help each other, share our difficulties and successes, and just have fun as we learn. I know I will learn a lot from this sharp little group. It was so interesting to meet and talk with each of them. I can tell that they are all good thinkers and ready for a challenge. With that, I'll let you get to know the participants.....