Friday, June 24, 2011

Rough Draft of my Video

So, I've decided to go with a Curious George theme for my video. I hope to incorporate the different themes of teaching and following curiosities. I plan to use much of the music from Jack Johnson's Album Sing-a-longs and Lullabies for The Curious George Film. I plan to use personal photographs from throughout my life and many from when I was teaching this year.

So far, I have written some script that I plan to read for the video. I don't plan on speaking for the whole duration, as I want to incorporate music and lyrics to give additional depth to my video. Any feedback would be much appreciated! This is just my initial plan, and I hope make it much stronger with everyone's feedback! Thanks!


Curiosity. My need for knowledge. My need to explore. My need to learn. Where did it come from? Looking back, I would say that my oldest friend taught me how to explore my curiosities. George was by my side since I could remember. His stories inspired me to follow my heart and curiosities. I always knew that I would dedicate my life to service to others. Though many years as a student, I realized my purpose was to inspire others to follow their curiosities. During my last two years of college, I knew I had to become a teacher.



This year, I spent my time training to be a teacher. I started the year filled with excitement, but also many questions. Would I make it through this year? Can I do it? Will I be a good teacher? Will my students like me? How can I possibly feel like a real teacher by the end of the year? All I could do was work hard, wait, and find out. Meanwhile, I experimented with sentence frames, creating equity in my classroom, creating cross-content lessons, SDAIE and ELD strategies, positive reinforcement, promoting multiculturalism, creating a social curriculum, having students reflect evaluate their own behavior, questioning to guide students' learning, using intrinsic rewards, and providing access to learning. All the while, I wanted to develop the whole child, promote lifelong learning, and citizenship. How was I supposed to incorporate all these ideas and teach academic content?


There were times filled with struggles, doubt, and late nights, but hearing one child exclaim, "That was really fun!"after one of my lesson reinforced my decision to endure. I soon realized each one of my lessons became stronger and stronger, and I found many fun and exciting ways to engage all students. My students wrote a letter filled with follow up questions to an author, held a election, created rock journals, explored rolling motion with rollers and marbles, and learned fractions with fraction kits. I engaged students' curiosities and I was on the road to becoming a teacher!

Now that I have completed my year of student teaching, I look forward to engaging and teaching more students. I cannot wait to find out what curiosities I still have. With my own two hands, I know I can change the futures and lives of my student.



With all that I have learned, I hope that I can inspire students to listen to their curiosities and to let their curiosities lead them.





3 comments:

  1. Hi Melissa,

    I totally know how you feel about enduring and feeling so much better after hearing from your students "It is fun!"

    I think that it is really neat (and true to you as a person) to use Curious George. Your introduction is really great. However, I feel like the ending seems a bit abrupt, but I do know that this is just a draft. Have you thought about pictures that you are going to use? I hope this helps.

    - Carrie

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Melissa!
    I really like the idea of using Curious George as a way to highlight your own curiosity in life (especially since it connects to the elementary teacher curriculum so well). The only suggestion I have is that you weave that idea into your script a bit more in the middle, specifically the part where you start talking about experimenting with different strategies. I think that would be a great opportunity to talk about how your curiosity played out in your teaching. Really great concept!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great (and curious) story - I look forward to seeing your video. When you enumerate the list of teacher strategies, the curious theme gets a bit lost, but hopefully you'll be able to maintain that in your video. Go for it!

    ReplyDelete