April 30-May 4 Reflection

"In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing."

- Philip Gilbert Hamilton

        Today in class we met face to face and it was great seeing my classmates once again after a long month of ongoing learning at our own homes. I chose the quote above because of the interesting and engaging activity we did in class today called PEA (Positive Experience Approach).  The whole concept of PEA was to write two positive things about our classmates.  We then cut the names along with the two positive characteristic into strips and the strips were distributed to each of us.  We then had the opportunity to read what each other had to say about ourselves. I really enjoyed this activity, for one I felt very good about myself based on what my classmates had to say about me.  It was a great picker-uper.  I also enjoyed hearing and learning about my classmates even more.  This PEA activity was very simple, but meaningful and a great way to assess our students.  Like we discussed in class, PEA is an activity that can be done at the beginning of the year to see what the students thought about one another on the first day.  The students can then keep these strips and at the end of the year compare what their classmates had to say about them on the first day to what they had to say  after getting to know one another at the end of the year.
       PEA is also a great way to assess collaboration among group members.  Each group member would say something positive about what each group member did to help make  the project a success.  PEA is also a fun activity to help assess adjective usage, nouns, and sentence structure.  Overall, PEA is one activity I plan to do next year with my students.
      Other than the PEA activity, we also discussed our livetext portfolio and the one major artifact we need to upload which is our Literature review.
       Overall, today was a very productive and positive day.  It was great seeing my wonderful classmates and professor once again.  See you all on Friday!