Meeting #6

In addition to our meeting this week, Westport sponsored a Family Math and Science night. Several girls helped set up and then stayed for the event. This photo is of Kevani and DeAndrea playing during a break.....sweet!

This week was out of our normal routine. The girls have a unit test on operations with decimals and percents, so we used this as an intensive group study session.

One of the articles we read in our teacher book study this fall was about the differences in success at a major university of Asian students vs. African American students. These students came into their freshman year with equivalent SATs, high school GPAs, parental support, and motivation. However, the African American students performed much more poorly in their mathematics courses their first year in college than the Asian students. The difference was in how they studied. The African American students studied independently, and when they were stuck, they brought their questions to class. The Asian students also studied independently, but then brought their questions and problems to a study group of their peers. When they went to class, they had already mastered the material thanks to the group interaction and were ready to learn the new material presented by the professor.

I'm trying to help my girls learn to work effectively together and to rely on each others' skill and expertise. This was a start. I set it up as a jigsaw - groups were assigned to master a group of problems, then we regrouped and the girls taught their new group members the problems they knew. Today they were only partly successful - they were very hesitant to work with the girls who are on the other team during the school day. I was surprised by this since we've met weekly for over a month. The positive from the day is that they did practice working in flexible groupings and develop a higher familiarity with the material, and we had one more experience developing trust.

Photos of Karen Stark's room

Meeting #5

It's nice to finally post some pictures of the girls! This was the first time the girls seriously worked on their designs. We talked about how color is associated with mood and attention, and looked at color samples that fit the criteria - calming, peaceful, good for attention - that we want.

While we did some reading on websites about color in the classroom, I found this response to a question about color and autistic children:

"David I have worked many years in color, lighting and design with mentally impaired individuals, and at present a niece that is autistic. What I have found with these individuals, and especially my niece who I have observed from the age of 6 months, is that it takes very little to overstimulate them. Their environment should be very orderly, calm, and monochromatic. Mary a previous post, had mentioned blue and green as being good colors and she is correct, these colors calm, relax, and nuture. But more than these colors, you need to have a LOT of negative (blank) space in these rooms with light neutral colors as Mary suggested. Use bright colors as accent colors in the form of pictures, and/or seasonal display but be careful even with that, don't use very much. Surfaces with strong value contrast, especially flooring, can cause problems; the autistic person sometimes does not see a black and white tiled floor as black and white, but the white tile as the floor and the black tile as a hole and will be afraid to walk on it. The flooring should be close in value and hue to the walls. It has been very enlightening working so closely with my niece and observing her progress."