First week of My Field Project

This week we started the “Regions of PA” project in fourth grade. It is fun being back in a regular classroom again, even though I’m only there to assist. The kids are enjoying the “Jigsaw” strategy with its home teams and expert groups – but there have been some personality conflicts while working together. Nothing serious, just the usual, “They’re not letting me do anything,” and “______ is being bossy!” stuff. We had to take some time to talk about compromising and taking turns, and using kind words! The kids have used the Palm handhelds before (in third grade) so they only needed a quick review of the basics before they started. They created the shell of their PicoMaps this week and they have started gathering facts about the region to either type in FreeWrite or draw in Sketchy. I hope that they will be ready to begin “linking” the documents to PicoMap by Tuesday. So far, they seem to be grasping what we’re doing. I hope the use PicoMap helps them to make “connections” between what they are learning and what they already know about Pennsylvania!