We would like to invite our parents and interested parishioners to some workshops so they can learn about the strategies we are implementing. The first workshop will be April 25th from 7-8:30PM in the church basement. Parents will experience an activity for each intelligence for one skill. They will also take the on-line Multiple Intelligence assessment their student took and discover their own intelligence strength. The second workshop will be on technology and web tools. This will be on Saturday, May 12th from 9-10:30AM. The third workshop will be a trip to our virtual museum, the success of our project, and where we will go from here. The date for this has not been determined.

I would like to note here that Father Tom sent me an email today encouraging us in our project! He has been very supportive of this process and truly believes in what we are doing. That has inspired all of us! Thank you Father!

What a fun day! The students were very excited about getting into their research groups! Students were grouped by their interests. All the students who were interested in school buildings of the past formed a group. Students interested in the people of the past who played a role in American education, including  some of the saints, were put in another group and so on. This group of students will do their research collaboratively. The students were then given a list of activities for each topic to choose from to be their vignette for our virtual museum. The students could choose from the list or develop one of their own. The activities were created to reflect each intelligence for each topic. For example, if the student's multiple intelligence strength is musical and their interest was an invention affecting American education, they could write a song about the printing press, or create a jump rope rhyme. Finally, the students were given a rubric so they know what their project must contain for assessment purposes. The rubrics are based on the Content Standards for Social Studies. We were excited by the children's excitement.

I floated from room to room observing the process and helping when I could. I noticed something that was very interesting to me. The younger students (K-5), seemed to be excited about their intelligence smarts, what their project was going to be, and how they were going to do it. They were able to form questions about what they wanted to learn quite easily. The older students (6-8) seemed to be more concerned about which project would be the easiest to accomplish the rubrics to get a decent grade. The questions about what they wanted to learn were harder to extract. Any thoughts about this difference of approaches?

Today the students were introduced to KWL Charts. Under the "K", students listed things they "know" about "American Education". Under the "W" they listed things they "want to know" in the form of questions. When the project is completed, we will go back to these charts and under "L" we will list the things we "learned". This process seemed to go very smoothly. Some of the classes had used KWL Charts in the past so their familiarity helped the process along. We were impressed by all of the knowledge the students already have about American Education and by all of things they still want to know!

After school the faculty gathered to debrief and to discuss how the next project day will look. That will be the day students will choose a topic and form research groups. Together, we outlined the steps we felt to be the most appropriate and those the teachers felt most comfortable in doing. We also looked at some webtools that would help with the research process. One of these is called "Symbaloo". It functions in a similar way as the "Favorites" section of your web browser only it can be accessed from any computer! The teachers, especially of the younger grades, will be able to put the sites they want their students to visit in "Symbaloo" and organize them by the topics of the project. It's a cool little tool!