Ahhhh, Holidays, Breaks and Vacation…with a two-day work week, there was not a lot of work to be monitored on my GAME plan. I am still working on downloading to our site and have all students access the material. So far I have it to each class. I plan on playing around with it this weekend, in between the decorating, cleaning up and packing daughter back up for college. On a positive note, the trial run of my peer tutoring was a success. Right away I saw that it was imperative that the students have their rough drafts completed, this way the peer tutoring can focus on the edits and support and elaboration, rather than helping them write the entire paper. For the most part they were well behaved and focused, and it was not a struggle to get students to attend, I had 4 with the promise of several more after break.
On the personal development side, I downloaded my instructions for National Boards…hopefully I will actually get to read them later this week!
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Yay, Edie!
ReplyDeleteIt is always good to see success in the works. The heads-up on making sure students have their rough drafts completed is appreciated too. This is exactly the type of minor oversight that I am prone to suffer myself.
Isn't it amazing how a change of media can make a difference in student engagement? Have you had any problems with students sending each other digital messages when they should be doing something else? This is a problem I have had with online student collaboration. Then again I have to wonder if it really matters that much. Students are still getting things done and are far more involved than they would typically be. Maybe this is just closer to the bizarre multi-tasking to which students are accustomed: Work a little, chat a bit, download a song, update a Facebook profile and work some more. It is so different from the sit in silence and work until you're done that I grew up with in school.
Keep on keepin' on! It sounds as if you juggle life's demands admirably well. I'm jealous!
Trina
I am really enjoying following your posts. I took your advice and created a Schoology page for my classes. I've also had all of my students create their own page in the computer lab at school. Ran into a chink the first week--the "tech gods" got the wrong impression of the site and blocked it. Luckily, though, I was able to work a little magic and convince them of the value. We celebrated Net Safety Week a few weeks back and all of my students signed this giant contract as a promise to be wise while using the web. We discussed how that was their contract to me that they would be smart when using Schoology and not abuse the site. I hope they do as they have promised so that we all get to enjoy this tool all year. I have already created assignments for my homework for next week and several kids have actually asked me for the vocabulary words over the holiday so they can turn it in! Makes me so proud!
ReplyDeleteKeep us posted as you work through the essays. I can't wait to teach my kids how to edit an essay using Word. I think this will help take a lot of the effort out of peer editing and give them a little more motivation to make corrections on a Word document. Let me know if there are any more tips and thanks a million for the site recommendation!
Cathi
That is wonderful Cathi, you are going to be amazed at how helpful Schoology is for the kids who miss class. I am looking forward to really getting into it more this week...any suggestions or plans I will share as I go!
ReplyDeleteTrina,
I have not had that problem so far, mine tend to look up new shoes or play games, of course quickly minimizing when I am making the rounds, haha. They now think I have a program and can see what sights they visit...I know, but it has helped!