Wendy Reeve

It has been Reeve's dream to reinvent the idea of homework for her students at Oyster Bilingual Elementary School. With her "Homework Discovery Bags/Bolsas de Tarea Para Desaubrir" program, she will provide her first-graders with the opportunity to learn using hands-on and cooperative activities. The Homework Discovery Bags will be a collection of age-appropriate books, poems, songs, math problems and other learning materials in either English or Spanish. The decorated bags will each have a theme dealing with topics such as dinosaurs, rainforests, bugs or space exploration, to name a few. Each student will take home a bag and complete the required activities in one week, switching between the two languages each week. Journals will also be completed by both the parents and students to document the experiences and reactions of working with the bags. As students exchange the bags and supplies are replenished, the journals will stay with the individual bags as other families add entries. As the project continues, completed journals and "Homework Discovery Bag" experiences will be shared as a regular classroom activity. Reeve resides in Washington, D.C.