Monday, March 28, 2011

Yee haaa! Western theme Lab at St. Mary's

We participated in our lab three at St. Mary's this past week. This week we had a western theme that went very well. The lab started off great with the students really getting involved in the theme and the Cortland students costumes. Everyone did a great job this week with dressing up. There was almost an 100% rate of Cortland students that dressed up this week for the lab. This is very important to get the students involved in the activities that they are about to participate in. Especially for the younger students in Pre-K and Kindergarten. Dressing up only gets the students more involved in the activities to come.
I would have to say that today's lab was a great success. I started off in the cafeteria with my lab group working with grades 2-5. I noticed that this week the students were much more willing to engage in conversation with the Cortland students. The St. Mary's students are much more comfortable and didn't hesitate to ask a Cortland student to do an activity with them. I was playing lego's with a few young boys. The boys that i worked with while playing lego's were a little hyper and not exactly following directions. I needed to point out some rules and manors for the couple students but after stating them the students were very understanding and followed directions. I think that this is a good step in the right direction with connecting with the students.
Eventually we moved up to the gym where it was our turn to set up activities for the students. The students were very excited to play the activities. But it seemed that there were a few students that just wanted to play basketball or other activities than the ones we had planned. It was a little difficult at first to get all the students rounded up when we got them in the gym. But after a few minutes of setting up we got the students attention and started the activities. One difficulty we had was with the students attention at first. I feel that this was more difficult because we needed to set up or activities which took a few minutes to do. It would have been easier if we already had the activities set up but because we were in the cafe, we were not able to do so. Once we got into the activities i feel the students really were having fun. The students really responded to Rob's activity with the poly spots. The students were very interested in finding what poly spots had the treasure underneath it. I thought that Brittney did a great job with connecting with the students and getting their attention. She got down at the students level and the students really appreciated that. You could tell because they were very interested in her activity, all of the students were sitting quietly and waiting for her instructions. When it came to my activity i was very pleased with the students attention. There were a few outburst from the students but when it came time for me to check for understanding the students responded quickly and correctly. Overall i was very pleased with lab three at St. Mary's. The students really enjoyed the activities that they participated in. I was very pleased with the fact that when it came time for free time the student's didn't just flock to playing basketball. We were able to get the students to play other games such as four-square as i did with a couple students. I was very pleased with this because it gave a chance to connect with the students. It let me know that the students trusted our knowledge of the activity and were willing to try different things than what they normally do.

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