The inquiry fair. It happens once a year. Kids prepare weeks for one night of a year where we can show our parents what we are doing."Seeing how students each had their own area of interest and how they chose to share it with the parents and teachers,I think it was clear that students had a voice in the process," says Mr. Krupar. A teacher and a parent himself.
Two months earlier........
Our group was working together on colonization.Which is basically the time period from the late 1600's to the 1700's.That was the simple part. Now we were trying to figure out a way for all of us to pinpoint two things that our group could all do and agree on. Let me put it this way, way easier said than done. At last we agreed to do a poster, iMovie, dress up,and talk. Easy enough, right?
Now I have nothing against group work, but when you have two months to get everything set ready and done, forget it,that's like trying to make a pig fly.Not happening! I got lucky though.I had a group with people who actually worked and cooperated and got their end of the bargain done. Maybe this group work thing wouldn't be so bad.
Then the bomb dropped.Our first incident. Everybody thought we were doing posters when we had agreed that we wouldn't. They had misunderstood but that day is never coming back. To think that I thought things would get easier from there.
After spring break we had two weeks. In that two weeks we had lost documents, a costume catastrophe, and more info that needed to be found. Amazing what can happen on two weeks, I know.
I came back from spring break recharged and ready to go on high to get this thing done. After a day I was feeling worried. We were getting nowhere until we could learn how to do the iMovie. Luckily they taught us how to do it the next day, but then we ran into another obstacle. We needed more info. Awesome! Another days work ahead of us. We found it without too much mental damage. Goodness, at this rate if we were in a race with a turtle I'm pretty sure he would win. I was almost positive that we would literally be working up to the last minute. Now we had a costume catastrophe. Considering I'm calling it a catastrophe it wasn't that hard to fix. We all needed costumes that was our problem. The solution is as simple as looking through some drawers. Duh! The big day was four days away and our teacher still hadn't checked our poster info. One day we spent 45 minutes in the computer lab because we couldn't find our document and none of the computers were working and ugg! It was so frustrating. If this was one of those miracles in disguise cases my miracle was wearing a trench coat and a mask. I could not wait for April 17 for this inquiry fair to be over.
It was the day we had all been waiting for.The posters were set, the costumes were ready all we had to do was not die? I'm amazed we made it through the day, but we did. At 3:45 the inquiry fair started I was in. I was nervous but excited. A small crowd of people came to our exhibit, at least while I was here. It was fairly interesting to see other people's exhibits but in my opinion ours was the best. What can I say? I'm bias.
The first annual Mitchell Elementary School inquiry fair was a hit.I was alive.People didn't laugh at my costume, I had the answers to my questions and my iPad didn't break down. I am so glad I'm going into 6th grade. Good luck 4th graders!
