So It Begins...

The hours leading up to the first day I was an emotional mess. I kept going through the lesson plan and the timeline of events leading up to the after school program. When the time finally arrived I ordered the pizza, picked everyone up and then we were on our way. At 2:30pm we arrived at the school, pizza in hand, to distribute pre-tests to all of the students in the fourth and fifth grade. Both of these items: the pizza and the pre-test are essential to our program. The pre-test consists of questions about plotting points and how to read a graph with X and Y axis. The same test is given out at the end of the program to the same students and the goal is to see if the students in the after school program ranked higher than the other students. Giving the students pizza is a trick that Professor Ron Eglash taught us and it helps to make the program feel like something different than school.

After the pre-test was taken and the pizza was being eaten, we went around the room and had each student say their name and what super power they wish they had. The goal of this activity was to get to know the students and their personalities before we started to teach them. Then we broke the students up into pairs and had them "interview" each other in the hope to bring up the idea of culture and how they are unique from one another. Culture is the idea behind most of these tools because it is something that most people can relate to because it is something natural for them. The goal is to take something that they know and are familiar with to show them how it relates to a topic, such as math that they are struggling with and realize that they already know how to do it.

After the interviews we had a discussion with the students about what made them similar and different. It was hard to get them off the topics of favorite food, TV show and movies. There was finally a breakthrough on the topic of culture when we asked what their favorite holiday was and why it was their favorite. Some of them talked about their favorite foods that were ethnic foods and the other students either agreed that they liked it or said that they never had it. At four pm the students were bussed to the Troy Boys and Girls and we met then there. At the Boys and Girls club we had the students draw a picture of how they were similar and different than their partners. While they were doing this we walked around to talk to them more to understand what they are interested in. I really enjoyed getting to know the students and I can tell that this is going to be a great semester! I can see their potential and willingness to learn and I hope that we can teach them more than they learn in class while still having a lot of fun!