We began a discussion on the importance of designing classrooms to meet the needs of our students. Who knew it was so important? Since everyone in our class is in a field experience we analyzed our classrooms, and made some changes to make them more effective for the student's needs. Mine changed quite a bit. I moved the reading center away from the door and blocked it off, so students there wouldn't be disturbed. I also moved the tables to get rid of some empty space that allowed me to add another center. I made a few other small changes, but those were my big ones. 

This was an eye opener. Who knew that there were so many regulations regarding playgrounds? It makes sense though, since they do have the potential to be dangerous. We went out around the town to analyze playgrounds and return with our findings. My partner and I went to a local elementary school, and were pleased with what we found. It was well kept, and other than a few very minor changes that could be easily made we gave it a very good report.  This project provided us with some great knowledge that we can then take and apply to the playgrounds our kids will play on. Who knows, we may even be able to use it to create better playgrounds in the future!

This was a really unique project. In order to get us away from the overuse of Powerpoint, we created a partner presentation, but we used an online tool called Prezi. It was fun, and different, and fairly easy to use. It was definately a good way to escape the constant use of Powerpoint.

My partner and I did our presentation on Appropriate Punishment and Guiding Behavior. We learned alot about how to better create a classroom that focuses on discipline, and communication as opposed to punishment and fear. I know it will be difficult and take alot of work, but that is the sort of classroom I want to have when I enter the classroom.

This was a class collaboration. We all picked a subject area- mine was science. We then scoured the internet looking for activities pretaining to moose, and the book "If You Give a Moose a Muffin." Once we all found activities that pretained to our subject area, we gathered them all together and created a booklet. Now if we get into the classroom and want to do a unit on moose, we have enough materials to get us almost completely through it covering every subject area from science to art to math.

This project was fun! We went and found a childhood toy, which brough back alot of memories for me. I found my big huge rag doll Jessie that had been my favorite when I was little. We then took our toy and using charts that told us what was developmentally appropriate we created packets that suggested activities for a certain age that encouraged social, emotianal, cognitive, and physical growth. All our activities involved our toy, and it was fun seeing the things I did when I was young that I thought was playing that was actually encouraging my growth.