-One problem that I had faced with giving out grades, I’m a pretty easy and encouraging grader, is that students who did very well and produced good work had begun to slack in what they handed in to me.
I tended to give a lot of my writing grades on where students were and how they had progressed. At first, some students began to take this as a sign that I would give almost anything an A or B, so initially some of their work had begun to slide below what I felt their ability level was.
When students who were big achievers began to see that “low performing” students were getting the same grades they began to slack on the quality of their work for me. Everything seemed to kind of warp in the classroom for about a week or two, where I was getting crummy work from A students and pretty good work from D-F students. It was a strange ordeal. I’m a go with the flow kind-of guy so I just sat back to watch how this whole thing was going to unfold. I’m glad I did, because when I finally assigned their Unit Anchoring Project (UAP) everything seemed to settle. It seemed that students who were A-students as well as the D-F’ers handed in great work, because they had a sense of ownership in the assignment.
I feel that if you are able to give your kids ownership in their projects and an interest in the assignment you’ll probably get the best results all around.
I have a rubric that I assigned for this, but will probably do this with a checklist next time to allow my students more wiggle room.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Teenage Throat Kicking 101
“No Dan. No I can’t kick them in the throats. No, it never crosses my mind.”
I often find myself telling this to my friend Dan. He is amazed at the sheer amount of will power I must exhibit to not yell, or drop f-bombs at or with my students. He is also amazed at my “commitment to a gag,” which is how he refers to my going to college, pursuing a credential, and actually entering the teaching force.
While at times I would like to tell some of my students to keep their mouths
shut, I haven’t yet. Over the first few weeks of teaching I have found it helpful to establish procedures that will inhibit there opening their mouths in the first place.
Journal writing is one such technique. While journal writing has all sorts of real applications, such as writing-fluency, etc. I have found that it best suits me by keeping my kids mouths closed for the first ten minutes of class. This gives me time to take role and address individual needs as they come up. Once I have all of my administrative stuff out of the way I feel that I able to focus on instruction rather than all of the other hooplah that seems to be associated with this profession.
There is still one sinister menace that I still face on a daily basis and that seems to be everything the associated-student-body does to make high school more enjoyable for students; rallies, in-class announcements, in-class handouts, etc. The one that gets me the most are the “get out of class free cards.” They usually come in the form of some pastel-like slip of small paper and they usually enable the bearer of the card to get out of your class and to the glorious rooms of the attendance office, dean’s office, someone else’s room, etc. I found one method early on of dealing with these-it is the wrong method. Ignore these slips and just hand them to the student at the end of the period. Don’t do this for many reasons. One-sometimes they are important. Two-when students don’t come to an administrator when they’ve been summoned the administrator will question the student for their tardiness, and that student will rat you out quicker than, I don’t know, but quickly. What you should do-glance at these pesky little flyers and check for a time on them. If they specify a time give them to the student when he or she may need them. If they don’t set aside five minutes at the end of the period when your handing back papers and let the students take care of what they need to. Your students’ trips to the office, unless disciplinary, should never take longer than five minutes anyhow.
One caveat here, don’t f around with medical slips, give them to students when they come in, and give students passes to the medical office whenever they ask for them. Even if you know Joey Santorini is just trying to get out of your class, it’s a lot easier to feign dumb than deal with a lawsuit from the Santorini family.
So, I usually just tell Dan that I kick them in the throat with procedures.
I often find myself telling this to my friend Dan. He is amazed at the sheer amount of will power I must exhibit to not yell, or drop f-bombs at or with my students. He is also amazed at my “commitment to a gag,” which is how he refers to my going to college, pursuing a credential, and actually entering the teaching force.
While at times I would like to tell some of my students to keep their mouths
shut, I haven’t yet. Over the first few weeks of teaching I have found it helpful to establish procedures that will inhibit there opening their mouths in the first place.
Journal writing is one such technique. While journal writing has all sorts of real applications, such as writing-fluency, etc. I have found that it best suits me by keeping my kids mouths closed for the first ten minutes of class. This gives me time to take role and address individual needs as they come up. Once I have all of my administrative stuff out of the way I feel that I able to focus on instruction rather than all of the other hooplah that seems to be associated with this profession.
There is still one sinister menace that I still face on a daily basis and that seems to be everything the associated-student-body does to make high school more enjoyable for students; rallies, in-class announcements, in-class handouts, etc. The one that gets me the most are the “get out of class free cards.” They usually come in the form of some pastel-like slip of small paper and they usually enable the bearer of the card to get out of your class and to the glorious rooms of the attendance office, dean’s office, someone else’s room, etc. I found one method early on of dealing with these-it is the wrong method. Ignore these slips and just hand them to the student at the end of the period. Don’t do this for many reasons. One-sometimes they are important. Two-when students don’t come to an administrator when they’ve been summoned the administrator will question the student for their tardiness, and that student will rat you out quicker than, I don’t know, but quickly. What you should do-glance at these pesky little flyers and check for a time on them. If they specify a time give them to the student when he or she may need them. If they don’t set aside five minutes at the end of the period when your handing back papers and let the students take care of what they need to. Your students’ trips to the office, unless disciplinary, should never take longer than five minutes anyhow.
One caveat here, don’t f around with medical slips, give them to students when they come in, and give students passes to the medical office whenever they ask for them. Even if you know Joey Santorini is just trying to get out of your class, it’s a lot easier to feign dumb than deal with a lawsuit from the Santorini family.
So, I usually just tell Dan that I kick them in the throat with procedures.
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