Our Lemon Road Experience
Picture taken by: Joary Casey
Group Members: Haywood Watkins, Leonella Deaza, Louis Birdsong, and Joary Casey
We volunteered at Lemon Road Elementary School.
In this project, we were given permission to create an internet based project that dealt with the five senses for five first graders to complete by working together. In this project, we taught the children how to do valid research on the internet in order to create a PowerPoint presentation on the topic. They also learned how to use pictures from the internet and embed them into their presentation. At the completion of the project, we practiced presenting as we presented the project to their first grade class the following week.
We did not create a web page for Lemon Road Elementary. This is the official site for the school: Lemon Road Elementary Official Website.
Group Duties and responsibilities:
Joary
-first point of contact between group and supervisor
-careful planning and preparation for the five senses project
-provided transportation each week to and from the elementary school
-facilitator for children; provided laptop used at each school visit
-assisted children with creating PowerPoint
Haywood
-facilitator for children
-careful planning and preparation for the five senses project
-played mind stimulating games with children to provoke more thoughts
-taught children useful research skills
-gathered information for the presentation with the help of children
Leonella
-facilitator for children
-assisted children with creating PowerPoint
-kept track of time spent throughout experiential project
Louis
-facilitator for children
-assisted with internet research and finding pictures
-assisted in playing mind stimulating games with the children
NCC Competencies Addressed
Communication
Critical Thinking
Strategic Problem Solving
Group Interaction
Information Technology
The children seemed far more internet saavy than we initially thought. We used the internet to find research for many games and information that we used throughout the project. We showed them how to use Google and they would type in what they were searching for and surf the web to see if Google had what they were looking for. They also used Google to find many pictures for their powerpoint presentation. They used the pictures from the the internet, but knew that since they weren't our personal pictures we would have to acknowledge the photographer by adding his or her name or website. Aside from the internet, they children used Kodak photo shop and powerpoint to complete their presentation.
What did we learn about group work:
We all learned that each person in our group, as well as, the children's group was very essential to our success of this project. Without each of our own help, we wouldn't be able to lead a group of first graders into learning new material that they could possibly use in the future. Among the children, without each of their own individual personailities, we wouldn't have the calmness, craziness, intelligence, and cooperation that the five had between the groups.
What would we have done differently:
We would take more time to get to know the children’s different levels of learning ability and comprehension of computer software in order to design a plan that best suited their skill set.
Working with children was a wonderful experience and we all feel blessed that we were afforded the opportunity to work with such well behaved and intelligent group of first graders. Joary Casey
Experiential Learning Page