NICA Adventure: Diá́s DOS

Confused about the blog dates?

I tried to post on Monday but was unable to do so. Last night the blog highlighted every word and had to be redone. So Monday's came on Tuesday and Tuesday is on Wednesday. What will Wednesday bring???

Today, I thought it would be a treat to have all the pictures that Joan and I took on Monday, in a slideshow for the teachers to see. We tried to show it with a data projector but we had the wrong cords. Interesting that we are becoming a paperless society but I seem to carry around many cords for the electronic equipment I want to use. Anyway....Teachers loved the scrolling pictures throughout the day as we added and updated the pictures with what they were doing. Even the lunch staff, stopped and took the time to view all the pictures before returning to the kitchen. FUN!!

If we thought Diá UNO was awesome, God topped it today!

We arrived and set up quickly, now that we are old pros at doing this. Began as before with a word of prayer. We always start with an ice breaker and today we gave everyone a penny (no centavos to be had), asked them to look at the date on the coin and relate something that had happened in their lives or in history during that year. This was really interesting as one would normally hear about American happenings...today was about hurricanes and floods that are more common to NICA and many teachers were only 2 or 3 years old on their coin.

Now that everyone was losened up, we started with the JOIN puzzle. Each group was given pieces of 8 squares and asked to work as a group to create all eight squares. The trick to this is there is no talking, no pointing, no gesturing in any way. You may hand a piece to someone else but you may not take a piece from anyone. All this to show how important it is to have student discussions in the classroom.

JOIN was followed by an OPEN ENDED problem. This took some explaining as there was not just one way to solve the problem. Once understood they divided into groups and WOW... the discussions started. the teachers really worked and discussed in ordeer to solve this problem. We then talked about the difference between the two sessions.

Another Brain Break! Hand shakes all around!

Now the heavy stuff. We read an article about interdependence. What makes it good, what problems could arise, etc. WOW...again...they were focused. We did it jigsaw style so that they were reading in expert groups and then returning to their HOME groups to teach the members of their home groups what they had read and learned in their portion of the article.

Deep--deep discussions were held around the room. Our translator really helped by listening in as the groups talked and was able to give us feedback on the discussions.

We can see the strong leaders as the groups continue to work together.

The fun part was doing another jigsaw session but with Fairy tales this time. Looking for characters, settings, main ideas, etc. in our expert groups and then back to our HOME group to share and discuss the commonalities. Take a look at the posters that were created to express the commonalities. GREAT WORK!!!

Lunch .....muy importante and all of it es bueno!

Joan began the afternoon with a lesson on concept cubes. Concept cubes can be used for a vaiety of subjects. Joan is bvery good at giving the background, the evaluation, as well as the directions for the products. Yoiu can see by the pictures, the attentiveness of the teachers tot he directions and the completion of the product.

Bless the Ellison cutter. We had cut shapes out with a template and made small cubes that could be used for vocabulary. Joan had them create a list of vocabulary words to use on the small cube.