Elementary Internship: Day 12

(96 hours in 24 hours to go)

Huh. Two uneventful days in a row. I had much the same day as yesterday. All of my classes were pretty well behaved with nothing standing out as remarkable or note-worthy.

I had time to revamp the All-Star Student Section (in preparation for being gone next week for my Middle School Internship, and because it just needed to be done). The theme is spring, and I found some fun and educational websites in line with that theme.  There was a really fun virtual butterfly garden that I found that seemed to be really popular (I tried it out on my  2nd graders) as well as a word search, hang man, and jigsaw puzzle that all support the theme.

There's a fine line with doing fun stuff like this in class vs hard-core projects. I think there is a time and a place for projects, but this isn't it. I'm trying to re-train my classes to get rid of some behavior issues, which means I'm going to try to make it really easy for them to be successful.

Also, I would rather teach them fun SAFE websites to go to, rather than some of the other popular gaming websites that are out there which contain inappropriate ads and games.

If I had my way, I would teach kids how to use online communities like Facebook and Myspace safely (that is if I taught middle school or higher, the elementary kids are not engaging in social networking yet), rather than assume they know the unspoken rules. Of course, no way will the district allow those sites to be unblocked. Which I definitely understand. The temptation to sneak onto Facebook during lunch break would be too strong for students and staff.

That's also why I teach e-mail to the 4th graders.  If they're not taught early, they'll learn on their own and pick up bad habits.  I used to teach e-mail in 7th grade, but by that time they had picked up some bad habits and it was difficult to get them to understand that what they were doing was not okay.

I'd rather be proactive.