MIA, Ask an Expert: explorations for advanced 1st graders

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from: phil <philkoltko@xxxxxxxxx>

date: Tue Oct 11 12:40:17 2005

I have the opportunity to try and introduce microworlds

into my son's school at a grass roots level. The school has

a dual-language, gifted-and-talented program that runs from

1st through 5th grade. Since the students in these classes

are a mixture of english proficient and ESL, Microworlds Jr

looked like a great "exploration center" to introduce into

the 1st and 2nd grade classrooms (because it is so language

independent).

In order to get as much teacher buy-in as possible, I want

to introduce the centers with as little as possible

training on the part of the teacher. My hope is to put a

"Microworlds station" into the classroom, give the students

and teacher the bare minimum of training (how to navigate,

the concept of giving the turtle commands, etc.) and let

the students explore it in small, self directed teams. I

was figuring on generating a series of "exploration

sheets", each of which would contain a set of instructions

to get to a certain point (like how to draw a square),

followed by a few ideas on where the students can go from

there (can you make it into a rectangle?, etc.)

Is this a reasonable goal? If so, do any of you have

suggestions for "explorations" suitable for advanced 1st

and 2nd graders?

Thanks!

phil

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