First Day of Fieldwork

After all the preparing my group did the wait was finally over. It was the first day of fieldwork and I was excited and a little nervous to meet the fourth grade students we would teach all about simple machines. It was the first day so we didn't have to teach yet. All we had to do was conduct our Getting to Know You Activity with the groups. For our activity we chose to play a Jenga game with the students. This however, was not an ordinary game of Jenga. Each Jenga piece had a number written on it from 1-30. Every member of our group had a question sheet on the side that contained both getting to know you questions as well as questions on the 3 simple machines we had to teach about which were the screw, wedge, and inclined plane. These questions were numbered and we asked the questions based on what number was on the Jenga piece selected. This was a fun way to get to know a little about the students while at the same time assess their prior knowledge on simple machines. I feel like the activity went very well. The students were all excited to play a game in class, and they even knew more about the simple machines than I thought they would. The class seemed very excited to learn new things, and I couldn't wait to have the opportunity to teach them in a couple of weeks.