Week 2 Reflections...

I enjoyed reading the second chapter in the Dana text, The Passions That Drive Your Journey. Well, maybe "enjoy" is not the right term, but I did find it interesting and was able to connect to a lot of  what I read.  I could come up with an action research project in almost all of the nine areas that were discussed in the chapter that I would be excited about working on. The one problem I am having is that some of the "wonderings" I feel most strongly about have absolutely nothing to do with technology, but being in the Ed Tech program I know that I must choose something having to do with technology. A project I plan to implement this year in my library is a "buddy" reading program. At the end of the year last year, we had a weeklong reading celebration with different activities each day. On one of those days, we paired up older classes with younger classes and they got together for 30 minutes of reading time with a partner. We had incredibly positive feedback from both teachers AND students, some of the classes even managed to squeeze in more time to read together (even though there was only a week of school left!) Walking through the building, I saw younger students reading books to their older buddies, who would help them whenever they didn't understand a word. I saw them talking about things like setting, main idea, and discussing authors and illustrators they really liked. I actually saw a 3rd grader explaining what the word "conflict" means to a Kindergartener when they got to that part in the story - how cute is that??? I don't know exactly how to measure the effectiveness of a program like this (much less add a technology component!), but it was so exciting to watch that I knew I had to implement it at the beginning of the year this year.