Celebration Reflection

Last Friday all of the Benedum students had to attend the Celebration of Inquiry Seminar at Lakeview. At this seminar all of the Interns present their research and findings. It is always very interesting to listen to but this year I found it very helpful for me and my current research. One of the presentations I listened to was on sight words and if visuals or kinesthetic activities help them recall their sight words. This presentation was very helpful to me because it is exactly what my research is on this semester. The presenter had really great and creative activities that I thought my students would have enjoyed as well. For one of her activities she created "angry birds" but in real life out of toilet paper rolls. She had sight words written on them and the students had to knock over the toilet paper rolls that had that sight word on it. I thought this was such a great idea and the students would be intrigued by it since it is just like the angry bird game that is on phones. I believe it really helped that many of the students knew how to play already and could relate to it. She also had activities like sight word twister, bean bag hoop throw and leap frog. Listening to her presentation and hearing about the activities she used it really opened my eyes to what I could create for my students. Another one of the presentations that I listened to was on sign language being used in a Kindergarten classroom. This was incredibly interesting to me and I was amazed to hear about how well her students responded to it and picked it up. The presenter told us about one of her students who never spoke to anyone in school or around people from her school but after teaching sign language to them this student began to communicate by using sign language. Her communication was still very little but it is a great start. The presenter also said she never thought that this particular student was participating and learning the sign language but when she recorded her students and her teaching them she saw in the video that the student was participating, she was doing the signs behind her back so that no one could see. I think that this is an incredible story and it shows that we should not assume that a student isn't learning because they may have their own way or be to shy to show their participation. I took a lot of notes this year at the celebration so that next year when I go to create mine I have an idea of what others did.