I am going back to school again! I am once again traveling to my former school to initiate another weblog project. NewsQuest was last year's project. A group of fourth and fifth graders used weblogs as the vehicle to write about current events, make connections to their classroom curriculum, and even collaborated with a group of high-school journalism students. See the Georgia/NJ Connection here. The students loved the project and their writing, thinking, and confidence showed great improvement. See the fifth graders' reflections here and the fourth graders reflections here.
J. H. House is a school with a rising Hispanic population. Children are motivated to learn through opportunity, challenge, encouragement, and modeling. Learning is shared and celebrated at all levels. The opportunity for learning in many different ways has been one of the major goals of J. H. House. This school has been at the forefront in developing good educational teaching and learning models for the ESL students. As I worked with my group last year I began to think about a project that would include ESL and native-English speaking children.
So, I proposed a project to the principal and she was delighted! I met last week with:
Joyce Hooper, the principal
Carolyn Poole, the Instructional Lead Teacher
Nancy Barajas, the At Risk Programs Coordinator (former ESL teacher)
Marcia Mateling, fifth grade classroom teacher
Jeanie Smith, Paraprofessional
It was a great meeting. We discussed the children that might be involved in the project and talked about possibilities.
"Thinking & Writing Wrinkles" was named in honor of Lucy, one of my students from NewsQuest last year. See my About this Site, if you're wondering why. I also give a description of the project there.
I can't wait to meet with the children next Thursday!