Gmail - Search results - monivillarreal@gmail.com

http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#search/internship+paper

Mud Painting

1. Reserve some soil (clay soil works best) from your soil profile activity.

2. Keep mixtures down to two colors per project.

3. To avoid extra dirty hands, mix the soil and paint mixture with a stick.
4. Give Students a small piece of paper for their work area. Start by laying down a base color, and then, add your design.

5. Let your project dry.

How to Make a Compost Sandwich

The activity helps students remember what to put in the compost bin.

Begin with an accordion book:

1. Fold the paper in half.

2. Take the top layer of paper, flip the edge back to meet the fold, and crease.

3. Turn the paper over, flip the edge of the paper back to meet the fold, and crease.

Decorate the outside like slices of bread.

Fill the inside of the accordion book with brown stuff, green stuff, air, and water (oops- this book has soil instead of air).

Classroom Management

Hello Instructors,
I wanted to introduce you to the Urban Harvest After School Blog, and write a few words about classroom management.

1. Get off to a good start.The first "honeymoon" encounter between the teacher and the students is when they formulate their impressions of the teacher. Students sit quietly, raise their hands to respond and are generally well behaved. The teacher is easily misled into thinking that this is an ideal class and may relax their vigilance. It is during this period that the effective teacher will establish the expected ground-rules for classroom behavior.

2. Learning School Policies.Prior to meeting the class for the first time, the teacher should become familiar with school policies concerning acceptable student behavior and disciplinary procedures. The teacher should definitely know what the school expects from both student and teacher in regard to discipline.

3. Establishing Rules.Establish a set of classroom rules to guide the behavior of students at once. Discuss the rationale of these rules with the students to ensure they understand and see the need for each rule. Keep the list of rules short. (Establish an clear reward and punishment process. This will keep disruptive behavior from taking too much time away from your lesson.)

4. Overplaning Lessons."Overplan" the lessons for the first week or two. It is important for the teacher to impress on the students from the outset that he or she is organized. (If you don't provide clear direction and activities for your students, they will come up with their own activities- and you probably won't be happy with the results.)

5. Learning Names. Calling a student by his or her name early in the year gives the student an increased sense of well being. It also gives a teacher greater control of situations. "JOHN, stop talking and finish your work" is more effective than "Let us stop talking and finish our work". (Becky Blanton lent me a book entitled The Morning Meeting Book that bases its practices on the early childhood model of beginning each day with circle time. During this time students greet each other by name and share an idea, like "what would it be like if you went through a metamorphosis?" or "what do you think a decomposers does?" This practice focuses the class, establishes procedure, helps the teacher learn names, and acknowledges the social and emotional needs of the student).

6. Be Firm and Consistent.A teacher can be firm yet still be supportive and friendly with students. A firm teacher can provide an environment where the students feel safe and secure. Many teachers report that it is easier to begin the year in a firm manner and relax later, than to begin in a lax manner and then try to become firm.

Watermelon excitement

Today I was at Durkee working in the garden with one of our volunteers and we were able to harvest our first watermelon. Since there was only one we cut it in half so we could each take some home. As I was walking through the school to leave I was mobbed by a bunch of 4th grade students (this was just after lunch). A few had been in my class last year and so were saying hi, but then they saw the watermelon and holy cow were they excited. They had tons of questions. "Why is it yellow?" " Can I smell it" "Can I have some of the seeds to grow my own?" "Did you really grow this at school?" "I'm going to be in gardening after-school, can I come everyday?" "Are there more watermelons?" "Can we go see the watermelon in the garden?" This went on for about 15 minutes. It was such a neat experience to see so many students excited about the garden and I think I may have very big classes this year. Which is a good thing!

Green Tomatoes and Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday my class discovered that some of our tomatoes are ready to eat. Of course they got a little carried away and harvested some that were still a bit green. So we had a taste test. The overwhelming result was that green tomatoes taste"yucky and gross" and the ripe red tomatoes taste "yummy." Perhaps we won't "accidently" harvest anymore green tomatoes.

We also planted our sweet potato slips yesterday. It took the entire class period but we did take a break halfway through to play "Gardener Says" exactly the same as Simon says but a good way to help kids learn to listen carefully and good practice for "Gardener (student name)" to practice speaking clearly in front of a group. My gardeners had fun with the game but were thrilled when the day was over because they all agreed that preparing the sweet potato bed is hard work, especially because our bed edges keep falling over.

On Thursday we will be tasting sweet potatoes since many of my students will not be around next fall when we harvest. I hope to have some pictures of our tasting. I will post them if all goes well.


Happy Planting
Becky

Pineapple at Durkee

Just had to share the current excitement at our school. We planted a pineapple top in the garden 3 1/2 years ago. This spring it started grow a pineapple--finally!

Here are some pictures:

This one was taken 3/5/08

This one was taken 3/27/09

This one was taken 4/22/08--notice the pup growing below and to the left of the pineapple.