Hi again, everybody!😁 As you all know
if you follow our blog, this week the role of analyst is carried out by Carmen llamas and Adrián. Throughout
this week we have had to evaluate our colleagues and reflect on our work as a
group, in what we could improve, and in what we have achieved.
To be honest, this week has been the best week in all our
time at the university, since we had the excellent opportunity to be able to be
with children for the first time, since fifth and sixth grade students from the
public school of Casillas came to our faculty , something for which we are very
grateful, both to our teacher Linda, and to the parents of the children and
their teachers who made it possible for us to live this great opportunity.
Having said that, we would like to
answer some of the questions we always ask to ourselves each week;
1 What was the best part of the activity?😄
Well, we think it goes without saying
that the best part of the week has been to have the opportunity to be with
children for the first time, and to be able to develop the augmented reality
task for which we had been preparing for so long. It was a wonderful thing to
see the children's faces of happiness, and seeing the process of transmitting
our knowledge to them filled us with satisfaction.
2 What was the worse?😓
The worst part of the activity was
when the end approached, since we would have liked to have much more time to
have developed all the games we had prepared, since we could only carry out one
of them, and we had prepared three. Obviously we value the opportunity that our
teacher has given us, but we would like to have more time in the future.
3 What was the best moment of the week (in the work of the group)?
Honestly, the best time of the week
was when we went with the children to the banks behind the faculty for lunch,
since we were chatting with them, we could ask if they liked the activity, if
they had learned new things, and it was a moment Very emotional and comforting.
4 What was the worse?
The worst moment of the week was
without a doubt before starting the activity, since almost all the members of
the group were very nervous and we did not know if our activity would be liked
by the children. Fortunately our partner "Paco", who had more
experience than the rest of us in dealing with children, gave us a little
motivational talk, and got us all to be calmer.
5 What have you learnt?
We have learned that a teacher must
always be willing to adapt to the circumstances surrounding his activity, that
the things that have been planned may not work out the same, so you have to
always be open to adapt, to change the activities to adapt them to the children
and the situation of the moment, and especially to maximize the time that is
available with the children, since it is a very precious time that has to be
used intelligently.
6 What do you need to conserve -as a group- for the next weeks?😉
I believe that the strongest point of
our group is the union we have, since we all collaborate in the development of
activities, we try to contribute ideas and improve continuously. Although we do
not have a clear leader in our group, we believe that the union of all the
members is something very difficult to achieve, so if we continue this way
together, our work will improve over time.
REFLECTION ABOUT OUR ACTIVITY AND OUR WORK:
Well, as you can imagine this week
has given a lot to reflect about. First of all we would like to highlight how
we prepared “the big day”; We stayed on Friday after class to give the last
touches to our activity and adapt it to the indications that our teacher had
given us, since there were some factors to perfect.
To adapt to what our teacher asked
us, we thought we should divide our activity following the ACAD method, so that nothing is left to chance. First we think of
the first element of ACAD; the set
design, for this, after discussing long and hard about the different
options, we decided that we would carry out our activity in the events room of
the university, since we would have ample space for children to develop the
different games. After deciding where we would develop our activity we went to the
events room the day before to see how we would place the children, the
materials we had prepared, etc. Finally we decided that we would receive the
children in the hall of the auditorium to welcome them, introduce ourselves,
etc. We decided that this would be the best place, since we could form a great
circle among all, to give our welcome a democratic tone, and that it would not
seem like a situation in which a teacher is checking if everyone is in the
class.
After the presentation we thought
that it would be best to carry out an introduction to the objectives of our
task, for which we would use our partner Paco's computer, since he had prepared
a powerpoint presentation. Finally, we decided that the children would play the
games that we had prepared for them (who is who, "pasapalabra") on the stage of the
room, since that was where we had more space.
We strongly believe that the
distribution of space and our materials was a great success, since we managed
to maximize the time we had, and we managed to get all the children involved,
by organizing the activities in an open space that allowed us to have a space
for all of the participants.
The organization of the epistemic design was the most difficult
part of the whole task, since we had organized our tasks thinking that we would
have an hour of time, but then we realized that we would have much less time.
Thinking about the tasks that our
teacher entrusted to us, we believe that we carry out them in an efficient way,
since before starting the activity we set a series of objectives. First, we
designate two members of our group to ensure that all children participate in
the task, and that if they noticed that there were any more shy children, they
would help them to participate. We also designate our stars, to carry out the
explanation of the task, the presentations, etc. Although we thought they would
do it among three members, it was finally Paco who almost completely developed
this task, with magnificent results. Two other members of our group were in
charge of taking photos, videos, etc. to gather as much information as possible
about our task. And finally we awarded two other members the role of “examiner”
so that they were controlling time, seeing what we were failing, things that
could be improved, etc.
Our task aside, in relation to
children we have to say that everything was very easy, since they surprised us
greatly. The children behaved in an exemplary manner, and showed a positive
attitude at all times.
When we realized that we didn't have
much time, we had to change our plan a bit, and we decided that we would only
carry out the game of who's who. We decided that this game was the ideal since
it would make the children work together, and would make some learn from
others, as Vygotsky's theory of cooperative learning defends. We also found
this task interesting to foster the competitive and team spirit of the
children, since we divided them into two groups.
Finally we told them to paint the template and work with the augmented
reality, and then give an explanation about the water cycle. We chose this
activity based on the TPAC method, since children could work both technological knowledge and content
knowledge, and we believe it was a great success.
Finally, in relation to social design, we decided that for our
activity children would always work in groups, since we rely on the theory of social constructivism, whereby children
learn best if they work in a collaborative way. At the beginning we divided our
class into two groups, and then assigned several roles as a couple, so that
they could explain the water cycle in a joint way. At the beginning we divide
the children into the groups of their class, but then we thought about mixing
those of both classes, to give them the opportunity to work with all their
classmates.
As a summary to this week we would
like to add that it was a pleasure to be with the children, and despite the
fact that we had little time, we enjoyed our activity a lot. We also believe
that our teacher proposed this activity since she knew that most of us had
never been with children, so she wanted us to have the first contact so that in
the future we would not be so nervous. We also realized that due to our
inexperience our teacher divided us into groups of nine to work with eight or
nine children, since we assume that she knew that we are not yet ready to have
a large group of children alone. Finally, it should be noted that we all gave
100% in this activity, since as our teacher told us, we all noticed the novelty effect, and we were very
motivated, although we hope to continue motivated in the following weeks.
Thank you very much for reading it! Best
wishes!
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