Joining QUT Classes

Today (Wednesday) was more of a free day. We met on campus and were immediately greeted by some lovely volunteers giving away free loaves of bread! It was wonderful. Apparently the campus has biweekly donations from local business that they give away to students. I was surprised at the lack of a line! You could just walk right up and grab something. We spent the morning avoiding the rain and searching the web for the Australian curriculum. It isn't too different from the American curriculum. I was able to find the year one standards that I will have to be teaching next week. I can't wait to find out what the students already know. We were given about three hours to do this and many of us finished in 30 min... so the rest of the morning was spent chatting with friends and updating blogs. It was the afternoon where we had most of our fun!

We were given the opportunity to sit in on a technology class and a science class. If these would have been lectures I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. Being as it were, the students were all giving presentations :) We learned about legobotics and how they teach kids without them really knowing that they are learning. It is something I would love to become more comfortable with and see if I could incorporate it into elementary classrooms. From the presentation it seemed that it would benefit upper middle school and high school the most. We were also informed about how we can utilize facebook and pinterest for our classrooms. I have already found the immense benefits of pinterest when it comes to education. There are so many wonderful and creative activities to build understanding as well as ideas on how to organize your classroom. As an elementary education major I would not use facebook in my classroom because students should not have accounts at that age.

Flat Stanley and me on QUT Campus :)

Science was my favorite class. We sat in on two presentations that the students had put together. We were a certain grade level and the presenters were our teachers and taught us a lesson. Both of the lessons were very fun and hands on. The first lesson involved using balloons, straw, and string and creating balloon rockets. The second lesson focused on beach erosion. We learned why it happens and then in small groups we were given a specific tool and we had to figure out how to slow down or stop the erosion, Our group had sand and using latex gloves we created sandbags. It was brilliant. We all had a grand time :) We all definitely enjoyed the science teacher as well. Her name is Jenny and she will be escorting us to the Zoo tomorrow!

After our homestay families picked us up it was an easy night. I love dinner time because our homestay dad, Kevin, is an experimental chef. Everything he makes is pretty much just thrown together and he rarely writes down the recipe. It is also a time where we all talk about our day and just about everything else. I have never experienced a dinner like this before. I love how close we are all getting because of it. We keep having to re-discuss our plans for the weekend because the rain is not letting up. I have to say my vision of beaches and sunshine is not playing out as well as I hoped. I am still going to be a pasty white Minnesotan when I get back home :( I hope it is beautiful at the Zoo tomorrow!