From: Laura Bashlor <lauralou@gatecoms.gatecom.com>
Subject: RE: A great Launch!!!
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 1996 19:45:35 -0500
Barb and other launch viewers, Did you get goosebumps? I did and I have suspicions that the few of my students who were watching did also. Interesting comments, Barb, about the "unmotovated" ones. One of my partners reorganized the classes to promote an "Honors Math" class, which, of course, means I now have an "Honors Science" class, whether I want it or not. Not the best thing in the world for cooperative group work. However, it does mean I can go full blast with the Mars projects. Since the launch was scheduled during their exploratory time, and only a few could be close enough to the room to slip in to view the launch, I celebrated by showing the wonderful segment of the LFM video of the Rover launch and deployment. You could have heard a pin drop! Not a breath during the whole film EXCEPT when the airbags became visible. They were oohing and ahhing for that. I remembered how we applauded in DC. When the classes were heterogeneous the motovated ones were afraid to show their interest...it wasn't cool. The unmotovated ones bullied and made fun of the very students who are now in the honors class. One other observation has been that the competition among the honors kids is bringing out more motovation than I thought possible in sixth grade. These kids are eating up everything I can get them on Mars. If Ameritech can fix my phone line you will see these 32 kids online and excited in Webchat, CUSeeMe and wherever we can get them. When we return to heterogenous grouping next term I just hope they can let that motovation dominate the attitude of the others. This is an interesting experiment. We aren't keeping scientific data on the results, but we are noting our observations. Laura (MI)