Meeting the crew

This was the first time we all got to meet the students we will be working with this semester. There were from familiar faces in the crowd, most had participated in the literacy program that I and most of my colleagues facilitated last fall.
The most striking thing I noticed  was how many boys there were compared to girls. There were two girls and thirteen boys. I also picked up on some group dynamics that will factor into how I approach grouping for my lesson. These kids have been in school together in small classes since kindergarten and likely are friends. I tried to take note of who worked well together and who was off task with their friends. 
The first thing we did with the group was make name tags! this was a good opportunity for us to circulate and hand out materials to the group, and ask them questions while they worked. Each name tag seemed to reflect a little piece of their personality and willingness to participate.
Then we preassessed their knowledge with a google form test that we all had contributed to. The most pressing thing I noticed was the range in reading and typing skill level. For some students, this was easy and not a problem. For others, we needed to step in and scribe for them in the interest of time.
The questions on the preassessment test were difficult, a lot of the second graders had never even heard of a lot of the vocabulary used and seemed to express frustration at the test. Nevertheless, they all took it and we are able to use the results.

How I think the students were feeling

Then we transitioned the group to the innovator lab where we had set up activities that relate to our subject area. Our area was engineering so we set up a marble maze game that is a fun way to flex some engineering muscles. I also got the change to observe how the students think logically about problems. At this point we had not come up with an idea for a lesson plan and I can use the information I learned about these students to guide in that process.