Monday Moment-Student Success
Wow am I having fun teaching these last few weeks!! Shhhh….don’t tell me that it’s because I’ve only been there 2 and half days because of snow days;).
But, really…I have loved my job the last few days!
On Friday, my students had a project due. We’re studying the Olympics.
Check out this project I created here.
I did this project four years ago and my students really got into it. After researching athletes, sports and countries, they took over the whole room and shared their wealth of information and their amazing 3D projects that they had created. Those special education students shared their projects with the whole school!
The last few years, when I’ve tried to do similar projects, they basically failed!! You know sometimes your ideas just don’t work with the class you’ve been given that year. They just have different needs and your teaching needs to change.
So I was a bit hesitant to try it again this year, but….I thought maybe it could work with this group.
They struggled with the research part over the last few weeks.
They needed a lot of guidance to understand what a country was. They didn’t remember seeing the winter Olympics (of course because they were young)!
I kept plugging along teaching skills such as prediction and summarizing through this theme, but I wasn’t sure how long we’d last into this unit.
The due date for their projects was Friday, but I had visions of haphazard projects thrown together at the last minute or no projects at all.
WOW! Was I surprised!!
Every student in that group completed an AMAZING project at home. They ALL had parent support, and they ALL could explain the facts that they had researched.
They even were able to answer questions that their classmates asked them.
They told me they had used their snow days to research and to find objects from their home to create their projects. So, as I sat on the couch watching movies on those snow days, my students were LEARNING and LOVING IT!!!
When one student proudly found me Friday morning to show me her project, she beamed while I turned away and cried those happy tears.
I then caught every teacher that I could in the hallway and had her share her success with them. (You know even those teachers who said she never could do anything right! I caught those teachers too and showed off that proud moment of learning).
I’ll post pictures soon of their projects. I now can’t wait to continue this unit.
So, in light of Friday, I came into school excited today.
I had been reminded that my students CAN learn and CAN have successes! That perspective gave me joy this morning as we struggled through new concepts in Math.
I even saw my students persevere a little bit more today because they also were reminded that they can be successful!
Where did you find joy today?