The dilemma is Spring Break and having the students remember what it is that we were working on before they took 9 days off. It came to me on the drive home while listening to Pandora. The song "Story of My Life" by Social Distortion was the song. I ended up getting into it just like Tom Cruise got into the song "Free Falling" .
I researched YouTube and was able to find a link that showed the lyrics. As a class we listened and watched. Afterwards, we broke it down to how each of the verses or as my kids corrected me, the sonnets, were set up. We determined whether or not it had to rhyme, how many sentences were in a sonnet, and how the syllables went along with the tune.
The kids were wrapping up a unit on Right Triangles. It turned out to work perfectly. Since there were only 5 students who showed up in class and 5 different topics we talked about, each student chose a topic and began putting together their song. They worked for the entirety of the class, asked very good questions, listened to the song more times than I could stand, helped each other, laughed and learned. They did this while most other teachers were watching movies.
The good that came out of it is that students were getting a chance to step back and focus on the topic. They didn't complete the song due to poor planning of time, but this turns out to be a good thing. We will complete our songs on the Monday we get back, giving the students a renewed focus as to where we were before they left. One student who missed a class that week picked a topic he was not in class for. So he had to learn the topic before he could write about it. Naturally, his classmates helped him with this. I had them focus their energy this time into the meat and potatoes of the lessons as opposed to the poems that we did and most of them simply just wrote about how they feel about the subject matter.
The feedback that I got was mostly a positive one. The students' only gripe was that they weren't able to choose the song that they would write to. They wanted a rap song. I told them my car driving story and they were pretty much SOL once I heard that on the radio.
We are going to wrap this up by recording it and if it's any good, we will post it on YouTube.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Pic of Garden from earlier post
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| Unfortuanately, I forgot to take a picture of it while it was hanging up. |
Monday, April 4, 2011
Poetic Assessment
Twas the night before Thursday and all through the house, all the ITSers were stirring, with rhymes for each verse????. Well you get the point. So, I went to school the very next day, and because we had just finished a unit, it was test day!! Yay!!!!
In class I have been using a website produced by Henrico County that has everything you need to know for Geometry. Already produced worksheets and powerpoints, along with some other connections. The only things it is missing is the assessment pieces. So I, who am a newby when it comes to teaching Geometry, have been pairing up the lessons from online to the sections of the book. This way I can draw questions from the assessment pieces from our book. Well, after each test, the students have made it clear they didn't like the format. I have now changed it up 4 times for 4 tests. So I decided to use the same types of poems that we used in class the night before to help in the assessment. We paired up and the kids were to come up with four different types of poems for the material that we have covered. Since it was their first time, I wanted to go light on them in terms of grading. They did a great job!! They were laughing and actually having fun. I had them read them aloud and it was fun to see how humble they became. For the majority, they were able to draw some of the basic concepts from the lessons and put it into words. For some, they were able to take the tougher concepts and produce fun little poems. It really helped me see where the students were in their understanding. Many obviously hadn't crossed from their middle school understanding of triangles to the deeper concepts. One group focused on their frustration of having to learn these things. I finished up the assessment with an 8 question multiple choice test. Given that I may use this form of assessment again, I will make sure that I will bring up their old poems and let them know a little more specifically what I am looking for. It also would've been nice if I had time to produce a better rubric. The one I handed them was a little rushed and only covered the basic understanding of the poems. I needed to make sure they covered the specifics of what they had learned. Whatever the case, the students had fun in a math class. That in itself is an achievement.
In class I have been using a website produced by Henrico County that has everything you need to know for Geometry. Already produced worksheets and powerpoints, along with some other connections. The only things it is missing is the assessment pieces. So I, who am a newby when it comes to teaching Geometry, have been pairing up the lessons from online to the sections of the book. This way I can draw questions from the assessment pieces from our book. Well, after each test, the students have made it clear they didn't like the format. I have now changed it up 4 times for 4 tests. So I decided to use the same types of poems that we used in class the night before to help in the assessment. We paired up and the kids were to come up with four different types of poems for the material that we have covered. Since it was their first time, I wanted to go light on them in terms of grading. They did a great job!! They were laughing and actually having fun. I had them read them aloud and it was fun to see how humble they became. For the majority, they were able to draw some of the basic concepts from the lessons and put it into words. For some, they were able to take the tougher concepts and produce fun little poems. It really helped me see where the students were in their understanding. Many obviously hadn't crossed from their middle school understanding of triangles to the deeper concepts. One group focused on their frustration of having to learn these things. I finished up the assessment with an 8 question multiple choice test. Given that I may use this form of assessment again, I will make sure that I will bring up their old poems and let them know a little more specifically what I am looking for. It also would've been nice if I had time to produce a better rubric. The one I handed them was a little rushed and only covered the basic understanding of the poems. I needed to make sure they covered the specifics of what they had learned. Whatever the case, the students had fun in a math class. That in itself is an achievement.
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