ThursdayFebruary 11th 2010: Today I talked to my group that I will be working with. I am a shy person when it comes to leading a group of people I don't know. I get more and more over than the more that I teach. I am working with Brianna and Skyler. Both are very unique and they get along with each other great. Brianna took over the talking from the beginning. I showed them my pictures and Brianna showed hers; Skyler couldn't find his pictures. From then on Brianna would ask the questions. What kind of movies do you watch, where have you been, and so on. She never actually wanted to hear what I had to say because she was so excited to tell me about herself. Skyler on the other hand is not shy once you get him talking. But he watches us and pipes in when we ask him. Each child is completely different and I love working with them.
Thursday February 18th 2010: Today I drew my family characters with Brianna and Skyler. They didn't complain about it but I am not sure if they really enjoyed it throughly. Brianna complimented mine and Skyler's drawings saying that we are artists. Brianna did not understand the concept all the way because he drew scenes. One of her brother and her fighting; it even had dialogue. I explained to her that it is just one character and she doesn't have to be in it. They both completed their drawings without grumbling. They are really motivated children that I enjoy speaking with.
Thursday February 25th 2010- Brianna and Skyler picked their characters today, as did I . They first began writing about each character-just little things that came to mind when they thought of them. Then after they did that. I asked which one they wanted to do and then had them go more in depth and detail about that character. They were a little bit more unfocused today than the previous days. They had more to tell me about other matters, videogames, their new hair color, about the most recent rated R horror movie they watched, etc. So I struggled keeping them on task today. But in all, we made pretty good progress. Skyler will be portraying his cat "Bob Marley" and his adventure to Denver and Breanna will be acting out her sister who is gothic. SO this will be interesting. I am going to be my sister-in-law who is an opera singer that lives in Paris, France. I still havn't started on her story yet. We are doing good as a group and everyone is getting along great.
March 4th,2010- Today I decided to change my character to my daughter Mara. She is three and really fun to imitate. I figured her story would be more interesting to hear about. So I read my story to my kids and they were able to see how the stories should be written. We started on Skylers character story because he already knew what he was going to say about his cat Bob. Breanna started brainstorming on paper with bubble clusters about her sister. She was able to come up with some really good details about her character. Skyler started telling me his story while I typed it. They really enjoyed the computer being there instead of having to write it out with a boring pencil and paper. His story went in sequence very smoothly. He was able to express his detail pretty well. After he told me his story and I typed it, I read it out loud to him and asked him questions so that he could go deeper into it. Breanna listened to the story and I think it gave her some ideas on how she would like to say hers. Next I started on Breannas but it did not get finished.
March 11, 2010- Today we worked on getting Breanna's story typed and in the computer. After she read me hers, I read it back to her. She does not have a smooth story and it really doesn't have a sequence of events or a real story line. She didn't really know where she was going with it. Her brainstorming does not match her story that she told me. She went from her sister present day to her sister while she was a baby. I am okay with that but we need to clean it up a bit and make the details not contradicting. I told her to go home and imagine her sister and see if she can think up ways to make her story really about her sister.
March 18th, 2010- We got off to a late start today because our room was taken so we went into the library. I read both of the childrens stories out loud to them so they can see what needs to be changed to make a better story. I started with Skyler and we had fixed most of the errors before. Then for Breannas story I made sure she wanted to portray her sister while she was little. She wanted to so we made sure all the information was complimenting eachother. She randomly told her story so we had to reorder events and make sure it made sense to the audience. Hers is still not as good as we need it so when testing is over we still have a little work to do yet. So far so good though. They have really been great kids to work with.