Sunday, May 24th, 2009, 6:55 am
Serving in ImpACT was not a hard decision to make; I have always liked kids and grew up taking care of my younger brother and cousins. However, I would not have thought that serving these young children in ImpACT would have such an effect as to be a cornerstone of growth for myself. Every Sunday I am reminded of the importance of having trust, especially when it is modeled by the way our girls trust us, their team leads. They show such attention to the things that we teach them. They take us seriously and learn from what we tell them, even when sometimes, I am not completely sure of what I am doing in a certain activity or the way that I am explaining something to them.
I have noticed this growing trust with one of my girls. At first, she was one of our most quiet and reserved girls. She would only talk to one other girl in Chinese and not pay much attention to the activities. This distraction was because she had recently immigrated with her family from China. She was not very fluent in English, so she felt too insecure in participating and talking to the other girls and me. I understood how hard it was for her, so I had a hard time asking her over and over again to speak English. However, as time progressed I have seen her improve. She speaks English to all of us now, and I actually feel closer to her. Every time she arrives she greets me with a big hug. I find this so heartwarming and a bit funny, as we are about the same height but she is 11 years younger than I am. She understands the Joyland messages a lot better, and I know that she does seriously take in what she learns there. Part of this is shown in her drawings when she depicts values and characters that she is learning about. Seeing her growing together with the rest of the girls makes me glad to have taken part of the wonderful journey that is ImpACT.
–Diana
Sunday, May 24th, 2009, 6:42 am
ImpACT was dynamic this past month! First the ImpACT teachers launched a new session of Academic Boost classes in Fractions, Storytelling, and Bottle Rockets. Then the ImpACT students joined the Joyland students for a special picnic on Easter Sunday. Finally last week the students launched their very own parachutes in an egg drop contest.
Fractions can be intimidating but not when Teacher Cindy teaches it using cake! She explained how to use the numerator and denominator to compare fractions, and the students practiced what they learned by working in teams. They put fractions in order from least to greatest. Sometimes it got tricky. Is 3/4 greater than 4/7? It was great to see the older third graders help the younger first and second graders in their teams. The students also made fraction kits to take home. But everyone’s favorite part of class was using fractions to divide Teacher Cindy’s cake!
Kicking off Storytelling class, Teacher Hugo engaged the kids with a dramatic reading of the classic children’s story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Although many of the students already knew the story, Teacher Hugo made it new and interesting with his various accents.
Teacher Kathy taught the students how they could make a story interesting with the three main building blocks of storytelling: introduction, plot, and conclusion. With a comic strip and a lot of team work, the students wrote a story together as a class. The students were then given comic strips to write their own story. Every story was unique. One student even wrote a story with her team leads as the main characters!
Teacher Wynn and Teacher Simon taught the students the dynamics of a rocket. The nose cone made the rocket aerodynamic; the rocket flew faster as it cuts through the air with its sharp and sleek top. The body of the rocket was made from recycled soda bottles, to which the students attached fins for balance. All students carefully decorated their fins then proudly attached them onto their rockets. There were fins with stars, stripes, and peace signs. One student even colored his entire fin red so he could spot his rocket in the sky. Teacher Wynn and Teacher Simon also taught Newton’s Third Law which states that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. The students saw how this happens in real life when they launched their rockets. To launch the rockets the teachers pumped water and air into the bottle. When the rocket was uncapped, water and air gushed out, pushing the bottle high into the air. The student-made rockets easily blasted over 100 feet! The students cheered victoriously while the teachers scrambled to find shelter as the rockets dropped back down to earth.
The students again applied what they learned about aerodynamics and pressure when ImpACT had an egg drop contest. The students were challenged to construct containers to protect their eggs from cracking when dropped from a third floor balcony. Of course the students remembered how air would push a container up so many teams made parachutes for their containers to catch the air, so that their containers will drop slowly and safely to the ground. The students cheered and high-fived each other whenever Teacher Hugo announced that an egg was “alive!”
Finally for Easter the ImpACT students joined the students from Joyland for some fun in the sun. In different teams, the students competed in cheering (one was in Spanish and another featured cartwheels!), an egg relay, and of course a very special Easter egg hunt.
If you missed out this month, join us this coming month! Get picked up at your school this Sunday!
