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On Friday, we took our kindergarteners on their very first field trip! Our destination: The Glazer Children’s Museum of Tampa. The Glazer Children’s Museum is like one giant, interactive play ground. Everything in the museum is hands on and integrates math, science, technology, art, imaginative play, and so much more.
Click on "Read More" to read more about this experience, how it benefited our students, and see pictures!
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Girls on the Run is an organization that I have been involved in with my sorority for two years now. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this organization, it is a 5K race for young girls set up with the mission to “inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running.” Through a 10-12 week program, this organization helps these young girls train for a fun-filled 5k race, recognize their inner strength, build their confidence, become inspired, and celebrate who they are. On race day, supporters help these girls get ready with fun activities like a photo booth, colored hair spray, face paint, and nail painting. During the race, volunteers cheer these girls on and celebrate their victories with them. It’s an empowering event for the girls and all who are involved! This year I volunteered at the winter 5k in Tampa, FL. It was so exciting to see all the girls who came to participate, bright and early on a Saturday morning. Some came with friends, moms, dads, grandparents, and some came as a whole school team! While I was there I ran into my PRT (Partnership Resource Teacher) who told me that her daughter was running the race, and her husband would be running it with her. Their goal was to beat their personal best 5k time! She told me that her daughter has done this for a few seasons now and loves it! This is such a fun organization to support and volunteer for, and one that I would like to continue to work with! I would love to bring this organization to the school that I work at one day….! Teaching isn’t just about teaching our students content—but also about building those character traits, self-confidence, and so much more. Through Girls on the Run, we can help build strong girls and teach them valuable life-lessons outside of the classroom!
In the residency program, us residents like to take part in what’s going on outside of our classroom just as much as we enjoy taking part in activities inside our classroom. When we were invited by the math resource teacher to be a part of the STEAM night committee, we all jumped right in! Taking part in this experience not only showed us what it was like to work with other teachers outside of our grade level, but also showed us how much work goes into planning an awesome after school event. As interns, we not only attended the committee meetings, but also designed the flyer, tickets, posters, and found the connecting standards for each activity. We were excited to make this a night to remember for our school! STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. For STEAM night, it was our goal to incorporate all of these components into our event by having different stations catering to the various subjects. At the same time, we also wanted it to be themed to add an element of fun into the evening! We chose to do a polar express theme to go along with the name “STEAM” and the month of December. Each of the eight stations went along with our theme with names such as “Frosty’s Estimation Station,” “Snowball Shapes,” and “Melting Ice Caps.” When the students arrived, they each received a golden ticket which was hole punched after each activity they did. After participating in the eight stations, the students could get chili and watch The Polar Express with their friends and families. At the event, we also had the school choir and step team perform! The big night came and it was all we had hoped it to be! All of the teachers wore their pajamas to school that day to promote the program that evening. We all had fun with this—teachers and students! After school, we prepared our stations and made sure everything was ready for a great night. As soon as 5PM came, there was a line outside of the school with students and parents ready to come in. Our STEAM night lasted from 5PM-7PM… two full hours of learning for the 200+ students who came! We had exceeded our attendance goal and had one of the largest (if not the largest) after school events that our school has had! Everyone had a blast: students, parents, and teachers. The next day we received word that one parent was so impressed that she had even wrote about it on her Facebook page. We had students and parents coming to school the next day telling us how great of a time they had. It was surely an after school event for the books!
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