Mrs. Bailey's Class: Week 5

This past Thursday, Gitsy, Rebecca, and I visited Mrs. Bailey's class. We began with a quick discussion about the newspaper article the students were assigned for homework. Then we divided the students into their presentation groups. We have two tentative dates scheduled for the WW students to visit Mrs. Bailey's class: April 11 and April 18. The WW class is composed of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. There will only be about 8 WW students, so we might invite Mr. Charles' 3rd period class to attend the presentations (since his students have already learned about genocide they could help stimulate discussions). We asked Mrs. Bailey's class to consider who their audience is as they design their presentations. The subject matter should be presented in a straightforward manner, the material should be displayed in a visually pleasing way, and the presentations should be interactive.

The group work went very well. The students began to take the class more seriously once they realized these presentations were actually going to happen. They spoke about the challenges each presentation would face trying to capture the attention of the middle school students. After each member of the four groups was assigned a specific task to have completed by next week, we reassembled as a class. We asked the students to raise their hand and offer Darfur-related facts that they believed the middle school students should be aware of. This next Friday we will continue to work on the presentations, review the props/visuals that the students created, and have at least two of the groups stand up in front of the class and present the information they have collected.

Lastly, two students from the "What you can do" group designed a Darfur survey, which they already began to distribute. They are going to continue to distribute the survey and analyze the data. Once the students are finished analyzing the data, Rebecca offered to do a basic statistical analysis of it as well!

This week we have our first class with Mr. Marszalek's students!!