Inquiry Celebration Reflection

       This year the inquiry celebration I was very excited to see what the interns accomplished and to bounce some ideas off of theirs to start creating my focus. I felt like I understood what was going on a lot more than I did one year ago being in the tutors place because I now understand more about the research aspect of it and the reality of collecting data and what you need to make your wonderings and topic successful. I was anxious to hear the interns presentations because I am going from a seventh grade middle school English class back down to a first grade class for my intern year. So since I am not early childhood specialized I wanted to hear some ideas that I could work with. I thought about it before I went to the inquiry celebration and I knew that I should not really pick a focus on the content or assignments/testings because I am working with first graders. Instead I knew I would have to work on something involving the social aspect of the classroom and the children. I was very please with the forth session because that was about behavioral research and what they did to make the students behavior increase. After that I decided I definitely want to make my topic revolving around the behaviors in the classroom and what things I can do to help reinforce positive behaviors. I received some awesome ideas from an intern named Liz (I do not remember her last name) but she created a tool box for the preschool or kindergarten students that had tools inside with guides on how to fix their problem. So whenever they would get in trouble she would say go to the tool box and solve your problem and they would pick up a took that would have instructions on the back about sharing or being angry and how to fix it. She said the kids responded to it immediately and really enjoyed this whole concept. Also I got to watch my close friend Kristina F. Present on behavioral issues and she had cute ideas as well. The third section I went to was about older grades and vocabulary comprehension and scoring on tests which was informational too but not something I am going to use for first grade. The inquiry celebration this year was so helpful with seeing how the interns went about collecting and pulling together their data. It was so nice to see how much the interns have benefited and grown from our program and I can not wait to be in their shoes next year!