13th October update

Back to 13th October and today we had our third Muffins and Mindmaps session.  This was really interesting and we came away with some useful ideas that we think could work well in the classroom. 

Labyrinths

DR showed us how to design our own labyrinth.  He told us that they can be useful for helping you to focus your attention at the task in hand.  Here is how you can design your own:

Little Miss and Mr Men

Our next task was to draw our own Mr Men or Little Miss person depicting how we feel about our project so far.  We all thought this was a really effective way of getting people to express their feelings and fears in a non threatening way.  Here is our character:

We are all excited and really enthusiastic about our project.  It's exactly the type of thing we wanted to do, even though it was picked for us by our tutors.  They obviously know us very well!  At the same time we know that it is a big task and we want to do well, both in terms of making this a success for the children and achieving high final grades.  We though that Miss Happy but Flappy captured this well!

Categorising group members 

We were asked to try to come up with job titles for the people in our group, depending on the skills they provide.  An example of this might The Godfather for someone who is very controlling and bossy!  Thankfully we don't have one of those amongst our ranks.  We did find it really tough to but labels on each other though.  We have different strengths but these come out at different times when needed.  DR referred to a document called MTR - i Team Roles.  A version of this can be found by clicking here.

DR also used a selection of toy animals that some teachers in West Sussex use to show the different skills that children might need when working. 

Chameleon - adaptability

Cat - curiosity

Bee - team worker

Owl - wise

Tortoise - determination

Spider - networking

Dragon - imagination

After the Muffins and Mindmaps session we planned our first meeting with the children which is taking place on Wednesday 20th October from 08.30 til 09.30.  We hope to embrace the Muffins and Mindmaps style and keep our sessions with the children relaxed.  See our plans here.

That's all for this week, we'll be back soon!  Thank you to everyone who has given us encouragement this week.  Creativity is keeping us going!

© Sophia Koiston, Oliver Hughes and Helen Goodall 2010