Weather Day and the Milwaukee Brewers

Today we took half the school to a Milwaukee Brewers game.  The event began with TMJ4's weather day where the kids learned a lot of interesting facts about meteorology.  The kids were very engaged in the presentation and especially enjoyed learning about the technology used by meteorologists and television production.

The students also really enjoyed the game.  I was surprised to learn that many students did not know how to read a ticket to identify their section, row, and seat number.  In the future, I would include this information in my discussion of expectations prior to the event.

I was so proud of how well the students behaved.  Our students were being polite and were having a really great time.  I noticed one of my peanuts even went up to a man to politely inform him that he had mustard on the back of his shirt.  Another highlight was when one student decided it was his goal to get on the big screen.  He led the students in cheers and the wave and just as we were about to leave, the whole group made it on the big screen.

I had a few personal take aways from this event.

• Going over expectations and content with students increased the enjoyment of the event. 
• Double check EVERYTHING before leaving for an event.  We discovered that we had only grabbed half the tickets (!) but this was quickly solved.
• Having procedures in the classroom is really a benefit when traveling outside the classroom.  We marched to the stadium and when we needed to have the students shift out of the way, it was very easy to give a side-step direction that is commonly used at school.  I was also able to quickly gain student attention by calling out 'Marco'.  Students respond with 'Polo' and then pay attention to the speaker.  These types of procedures make for a smooth event.
•  I had a student ask if he could journal about the event.  I think I will rework my lessons for tomorrow to reflect and connect yesterday to our curriculum.