Now that you have had a chance to collaborate with your Lower School partner, write a paragraph in which you reflect on your experience working with your co-author. What was your experience receiving feedback from your partner? What were the challenges of listening to and inhabiting their perspective? How did you respond and adapt to the feedback they provided?
As always, be sure to point to specific examples in support of your observations. And continue working to incorporate sentence variety into your paragraphs.
I think our chance to collaborate with Kindergarten partners was not only a great way to push our story-telling ability, but also an excellent way to make connections within the Poly community. I volunteer with Reading Partners where I help a student of a similar age improve in their reading, so I thought this project was going to be right up my ally. This came true in some ways, but I was proved wrong in others.
ReplyDeleteMy Kindergarten partner had a bit less comprehension ability and focus than I expected, so it was difficult to know her understanding of the story. She also had a (for lack of a better word) sassy predisposition, and often responded to my questions with a quick "No," or a "I don't want to, you do it." I was prepared for this somewhat by my volunteering experiences, but it still hindered our ability to collaborate. Ultimately, however, she did get to help a lot on the drawings, I just had to find out what she really wanted to do. I think this was one of the most important differences between working with peers and with students much younger than us. While I work with my classmates, I can expect to split up the work evenly and get it done no matter what. However, I had to work with my partner to make her truly want to work, or find out what part of the drawing interested her. I think allowed both of us, however, to have more interest in our respective portions of the drawing. In conclusion, I think this is a great project and had many observable benefits to my story telling abilities.
Getting the chance to collaborate with Ms. Rosenblum's kindergarten class was not only refreshing, but also noticeably challenging and entertaining. The first time I read my story to my partner, she only grasped the very broad plot, and missed a lot of the smaller yet key points. To explain, when I asked her what it was about, she responded with, "A princess and an evil witch". Although that was true, that's really not what I had expected her to say. This caused me to reevaluate my partners reading comprehension, and start to simplify my story even more than I already had. Thankfully, after reading through the story a couple more times, she began to understand the whole plot, and not just the major aspects of it. This process, yet frustrating, was evidently helpful and somewhat humorous. I also was extremely confused when my partner began drawing a witch on a broomstick and ghosts everywhere, because I had expected a more realistic interpretation. All the confusion and frustration set aside, I had a really good time with my partner. She made me laugh with her ideas and interpretations of my story, and I'm really glad we got the opportunity to take a break from regular school work and have some fun.
ReplyDeleteWhen working with my partner I realized that she wasn't too passionate about drawing. She dozed off a lot and continued to talk to other students. I wanted to get the work done while maintaining a fun atmosphere. It seems that the only person having fun was her, which was great but not in terms of finishing the project at hand. In order to focus her attention, I started slowly and carefully taking the markers off the table. After a few takes, she started to notice that the markers were disappearing. Eventually, she questioned me with a delightful smile From that point on she was engaged on the coloring and on the story. She started to ask me questions about the development and the plot of the fairy tale. One thing she wasn't too clear on was feedback. I continually asked her if she had any improvements to the story, which she always replied with a big smile following an "I don't know". As time went on I started to understand her comprehension levels and base my time with her off of that. When she was having fun there was no need to guide her attention back, because she was having fun while staying focused. By spending time with a kindergartener I realized that they aren't in high school and need different types guidance.
ReplyDeleteWorking with kindergartners was a great reminder for me about how far we have all come since our days in kindergarten. This was also a fun experience being able to collaborate with a kindergartner because they find the fun in everything. The kindergartner I worked with got excited just drawing the background of a page and insisted on getting multiple shades of many colors to draw every picture. His feedback really helped me simplify my story because I realized he knew a lot more than I originally thought. He was really interested in me writing another story. Some of the challenges of working with my kindergartner was his attention span as well as his fixation on small details that were not very important to the overall story. I tried to accommodate his ideas about the drawings but found myself changing his ideas more than I intended. This was a great and rewarding experience that taught me how to adapt a story and was a lot of fun in the process.
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ReplyDeleteWorking with my partners was a really great experience that went way better than I had anticipated. I don’t find myself to be very good with little kids, so the fact that my partners seemed like they were having fun was encouraging. I only read and explained my story to my first partner, and we did a few sketches.
ReplyDeleteShe seemed to be very interested in the story, but didn’t comprehend some of the deeper meanings. She also added various elements (more characters, different emotions, etc.) which I found humorous and a little frustrating, but I let her run with them. The fact that she seemed to struggle with the plot of my story, since it was so complex, even after I (or thought I had) simplified it made me rethink how I approached reworking the fairy tale. With her feedback, I realized that it wasn’t the word choice that I had to simplify as much as it was the complexity. I rewrote most of it after the first day with my buddy.
I only met my second buddy the day we started drawing, so it was harder since we hadn’t been able to go over the story together in more detail. It also seemed like he wasn’t paying attention (not really looking at me or the story), but he understood the story well, especially since it was his first time hearing it.
I was concerned about making it as fun as possible for him, so I often just had to let him run with whatever idea he was putting down on the paper. It wasn’t always what I had in mind, but it got the point across. He didn’t provide me with much feedback, but he seemed to like illustrating the story and understood the rewritten plot a lot better.
While working with mu partner I found it both challenging and simple at the same time. By this, I mean that even though it was hard to make sure that he understood the task at hand, it was simple because his drawing ideas were almost completely obvious. This was very refreshing because I am used to more complicated or even "forced" ideas for most projects and assignments in high school. When I first met my partner and began working with him, he actually didn't listen to my story the first time I read it to him! So, I had to adapt and re-read each page individually. Then, I would ask him what we should draw after each page, we would decide, and move to the next. Overall this was a great experience and I think the perfect challenge for our "social skills".
ReplyDeleteFor the past week, collaborating with lower school students has been both enjoyable and a test of patience. When we began working with the younger kids, I moved quickly from confident in my story to a little bit insecure. I read my story twice just to get Hannah and Mateo’s attention, and when I had asked for a summary, I felt that they had misunderstood my story completely. After class, I was looking for a way to make the story more relatable for the age group that I was working with. A long while of staring at my story resulted in nothing, and I found that there was no way to get rid of concepts that were hard for Mateo and Hannah to understand without completely changing the story. Instead, I decided to go for a louder text font to maybe keep their attention on the book. Last time we met with the lower schoolers, I worked with Hannah on the illustrations for the book. When asked what the story was about, she described the story in full detail the way I had meant for the audience to understand it. Her illustrations, while not exactly what I expected for the story, were specific to detail in ways that a person our age probably wouldn’t understand. Overall, I feel that, while difficult in the beginning, working with the kindergarteners has helped me write for a wider audience and has taught me not to underestimate someone just because they are younger.
ReplyDeleteWorking with a kindergartener was a fascinating way to add another element to my fairy tale. My partner Lena is the class artist, and apparently she was waiting for this week to come so she could illustrate my story. It was difficult to get feedback from her however, and I felt like I was putting the words in her mouth and forcing her to answer. Whenever I asked how she felt about the story, Lena would respond with “happy.” I think that my story was a little bit too complicated for her to understand, but she got the main idea. When it came to drawing, Lena had many ideas about what she should draw, even adding a few unicorns into my story. As I said before, she was very excited and she finished the drawings in no time, only pausing to have me remind her which scene was which. We developed a system where I would explain the scene, Lena would draw, she would explain the color scheme for that page, and then I would color it in. This worked for both of us, and we only got distracted when the Moana soundtrack came on, and Lena had to sing along and explain the plot of the movie to me. Overall we were a really good pair, and she put my audience into perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think working with the kindergarten class was a great way to take the fairytale project. I really enjoyed not only getting to know the kindergartener I was paired with, but seeing her unleash her creativity in the drawings. Before we started our collaboration process with the kindergarteners, I expected their attention to wander, and them to not pay close attention to the story. I think this proved to be true for some people (from what I hear), but for me, I was wrong! Although at some points my partner's attention seemed to wander, I was very surprised when she gave me an accurate summary of the story two days after our class had visited them. I was very happy with the feedback I received from my partner. She was constantly smiling, and seemed to be having a good time. She looked invested in the story, and was for the most part very willing to participate. I think I was pretty open to her ideas of what she wanted to draw, and for the most part her ideas were similar to what I had in mind originally. However, there were situations when I knew what I wanted to be pictured, and she had a different idea. In these situations, we exhibited our collaboration skills and worked together to create something we were both happy with.
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ReplyDeleteWorking with the kinders is so much fun, and a great way for us to understand how to change our writing style for the appropriate audience. The moment we walked into the classroom, one kid (Asher) got up and yelled, “My mom's pregnant!" Of course, I got paired with him. But once we got working we had a lot of fun! He understood and remebered so much more than I expected, and seemed to really enjoy my story! The moment I got home I was telling my parents all about the adorable kinders! The next time we met, Asher was sick, so I got to work with Mateo. I got the impression that Mateo usually has problems focusing, but when we worked together he was really great, and we got a good start on our illustrations! Luisa's partner and I were talking about the movie Moana, and it was just a really overall fun experience! I can't wait to meet with them again.
My chance to collaborate with a kindergartener helped me to see how much the crowd my story was geared for would understand. The first time I really noticed how much of the story my partner didn't grasp was when I asked him how my story made him feel. In my fairytale, it does not come to a happy ending until the denouement. When I asked him how it made him feel, he said, to my surprise, "happy." The second time I noticed how much he didn't grasp was when I asked what his favorite character was, and he said, "the bird." The bird in my story does nothing except for fly to horizon in one scene of my story. After we went over it when we were coloring he began to understand it more, which made me feel like he would understand it if simply just read a little bit slower. I also realized why we shortened our stories so much. My partner (and probably many other's) began to become bored of coloring about halfway through the process. This helped me to understand that my audience that the story is intended for has a very short attention span. Overall, I think I was able to help him keep focusing and we finished the story. Even though getting his attention was tough sometimes, we ended up working well together and finishing up the illustrations by the time we the end of our class period came.
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