The thing I was most surprised by this week in class was how critical students are with each other on their work. The kids turned in their first video project and their fellow students gave very constructive criticism on what could have been done differently to make the videos better next time. I was very relieved to see the kids encouraging each other while at the same time pointing out some mistakes that I may have missed if I was watching the videos alone. We also had a vocabulary activity in class where each student is assigned a word. They must define the word and draw a picture displaying the word to display in the classroom. The other kids were so hard on the students presenting their words, saying things like: “you didn’t simplify the definition”, “why didn’t you color your picture?” and “slow down when you read so the rest of us can keep up”. The comments never got nasty, but I was just shocked that the students held each other to such high standards.