Michael R. White and the CWRU Farm

My time in the Cleveland Public Schools is flying by. We have continued our work in Michael R. White’s with the 5^th and 6^th grade students. A few weeks ago we gave the 6^th graders their pre-test for our evaluation piece of our capstone paper. Last Friday we had our first Farm field trip with the 6^th graders. The lesson plan was on MyPlate nutrition information, honey, sugar, and bees. Once the kids arrived we gave three presentations and they all went very well. Although some kids were getting fidgety and distracted, they were very easy to redirect. After the presentations we split the kids into two groups and began our hands on activities.  Half of the kids went to tour the honey bee hive to see how honey is made and the other half of the class stayed with us and had the chance to taste test apples dipped in honey and have a discussion about nutrition.  Overall, I feel that the field trip with the 6^th grade class went very well and I am very excited to have our second field trip and see the post test results this week.

Tomorrow we will be having our final 6^th grade field trip of the semester. We will be presenting cold weather crops and the different ways they are grown at the farm. We also created a fun BINGO game for the kids to test their knowledge. I am very excited for this presentation because it has a Thanksgiving theme that I think the kids will really enjoy!

Unfortunately, with the bad weather we had last week the University Farm lost power and we had to cancel the 5^th grade field trip. After throwing some dates around we finally arrived at a date that would work for us and the 5^th graders and the trip is rescheduled for November 30^th. According to the teacher of the class there are many behavior problems within this group of kids. After hearing this information, it made me a little nervous about the trip. So look out for an update about this trip next time!

The other project we were able to work on right after fall break was the One Sight Eye Clinic.  This was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed our time there. The first day we worked in the eye glasses lab.  Here we were able to cut the lenses, help measure frames, and also assemble the glasses.  This was awesome to see because after screening a lot of these kids it was nice to see what the clinic had to offer them. Another volunteer day I was placed at the auto-refraction station. At first, I was in charge of holding the kids heads in the auto-refractor.  After a few classes got through the station, I was given the opportunity to run the auto-refractor. The auto-refractor was like a video game and was a lot of fun to operate. It really felt like we were needed at this clinic and people seemed to be very grateful for our help.