eMinutes:15 July 2010

Morning Social- Everyone enjoys coffee, fruit and cinnamon toast . . .yum! Good mornings and smiles all around.

August Deshais begins his presentation with student work projected from an Elmo (ooooohhhh!). He asks participants to try and decipher some student work samples. Laughter all around as we stumble through reading these first attempts at the written language. Caves seem to be a popular topic among kindergarteners. After some fun reading student work, August launches into a brief explanation of the history of handwriting instruction. Who knew pages full of squiggles that were “just right” were an important part of early instruction?

We then are instructed to do a quick write responding to our own experiences with handwriting instruction- with one stipulation. We must write with our non-dominant hand. Giggles bubble up from all participants as we struggle to write with cramped hands. August finally brings the torture to an end and uses the activity to demonstrate the point that often young students struggle to get what they are thinking down quickly enough.

An article is passed out for all to read about the link between handwriting and content that children are able to produce. Everyone reads intently. After everyone has had an opportunity to read the content August leads the group into a whole group discussion. Mary Ann points to an example of her students (boys in particular) playing in a sandbox and being able to produce more work as a result. Stefanie feels it is important to point out that not all handwriting issues are related to fine motor skills. We are broken into small groups of 3-4 people and given multi-colored post-its to write down ideas we might use in our own classroom to help students with handwriting issues.

Break for evaluations. Coffee, snacks, sunshine.

Read around. This time instead of being limited to a post-it we are allowed several sheets of paper and given the opportunity to read others responses to the same written piece. Everyone works diligently in anticipation of the BBQ potluck. August gets the grill and lights the coals. People in the kitchen do last minute prep-work.

The lawn game croquette has been set up and people congregate around food. Conversation flows as the sun beats down on a truly lovely day. After the corn, chicken, steak, and tofu is grilled August, Molly, Kelly and Julie play a game before clean-up. Rules are loosely followed in the interest of finishing quickly.

As a group we follow Chris Hall out to his forest adventure. As we walk conversations started during the pot-luck continue. We finally arrive at our destination, a quiet spot of redwoods a short walk from campus. After a quickwrite we discuss nature writing with those we are sitting closest to. An article is handed out and we all read then discuss the contents and lessons found within the article. We are then invited by Chris to explore some native plants with the help of a numbered guide. The last few minutes are given to personal reflection in our journals. A final discussion takes place after reading some student work samples. We then head back through campus to home base. The final hour is spent in response groups and independent work time.