Melissa Weihmayer
3-02-2007
Thursday, Friday, 6 hours total
Murray Language Academy
Lab help

This week I broke up my work into four hours on Thursday and two on Friday. My main tasks included A) putting together a plan for possible poetry projects for fourth grade teachers, B) beginning the clean up of the old language-computer lab, and C) helping out with rambunctious fourth graders in their lab periods. The poetry project was actually really interesting to do, as I found some good sites that could be easily incorporated into the curriculum. I am still unfamiliar with age-appropriateness for websites, and presume that that requires a bit more experience to get a feel for. We'll have to see how the projects go in later weeks. It is particularly difficult discerning between sites that are simply to take up lab time (do easy math games really help kids learn computer skills?) and sites which teach the kids something, or help them retain any of the information they read. The old language lab clean-up is a really big project, but an interesting one as I am really seeing the shift from old technologies to new ones first hand (the kid pix programs stored in there makes me so nostalgic for my childhood days!). A bit of an exhausting week, especially working with the kids, but all around gratifying.