*Zabe Showed me how to Title my BLOGS!!*
Well, Elena made a 38 on the MCAT, second-years are getting the best test scores in the state, and I still can't, for the life of me, figure out how to put a title on a blog.
Good times.
Last week I tried a little procedure we like to call "muddiest part of the lecture," only I kind of let them ask questions about anything we'd been learning in French for the last few days (instead of just my lecture) because, first, we had a quiz the next day and I wanted to be able to review what they needed rather than what I might think they would need and, second, because they said they didn't have anything they were confused about at first so I decided to broaden the base.
The idea with this procedure is that you tell each kid to write down, at the end of a lecture, anything that they're still confused about so that you can get feedback from everyone, even the kids who aren't going to say anything in class or ask you to stop and explain. In my case, the other option was to write down anything that you'd like to learn more about if you swore you didn't have any questions (for some of them, this may even have been true -- the kid who said, "I don't have any questions, there are just some things I don't understand" totally rocked his test).
I wasn't sure at first if this would actually help; the responses are a little overwhelming since you have 17 or more kids who all have problems with different things, and also since I didn't say the magic words "this is for a grade" I didn't actually get a response from every person, but there were a few patterns and if nothing else it made me stop and realize that even though I get really great participation in class, not EVERYONE is on the same page as me and NOT everyone is absolutely ready to move on. Wake-up call, I guess, informal assessment, what-have-you.
I spent a little bit of time comparing the make-a-question responses to how they actually performed on the test, and here's what happened: A couple of them did really well even in the areas they were concerned with, a couple of them were spot-on with what they said they needed to work on, and then a few of the answers were just a bit too general to provide solid feedback (Reminder: always be PAINFULLY clear when giving any type of directions!!)
I might do this again, but I think in a setting in which I have a class consistently and can set up my own room it might be more effective (?) to just have a box FOR this type of thing and remind them each day that they have the option of adding to it so that (a) I don't have to go through 120 responses every day and (b) if they have a pressing question THAT DAY they will always have an easy, direct, alternate-route avenue to getting it adressed, not just on special days when I ask.
Overall this was a good exercise, but hopefully the base idea could be applied more constructively. We shall see.
Good times.
Last week I tried a little procedure we like to call "muddiest part of the lecture," only I kind of let them ask questions about anything we'd been learning in French for the last few days (instead of just my lecture) because, first, we had a quiz the next day and I wanted to be able to review what they needed rather than what I might think they would need and, second, because they said they didn't have anything they were confused about at first so I decided to broaden the base.
The idea with this procedure is that you tell each kid to write down, at the end of a lecture, anything that they're still confused about so that you can get feedback from everyone, even the kids who aren't going to say anything in class or ask you to stop and explain. In my case, the other option was to write down anything that you'd like to learn more about if you swore you didn't have any questions (for some of them, this may even have been true -- the kid who said, "I don't have any questions, there are just some things I don't understand" totally rocked his test).
I wasn't sure at first if this would actually help; the responses are a little overwhelming since you have 17 or more kids who all have problems with different things, and also since I didn't say the magic words "this is for a grade" I didn't actually get a response from every person, but there were a few patterns and if nothing else it made me stop and realize that even though I get really great participation in class, not EVERYONE is on the same page as me and NOT everyone is absolutely ready to move on. Wake-up call, I guess, informal assessment, what-have-you.
I spent a little bit of time comparing the make-a-question responses to how they actually performed on the test, and here's what happened: A couple of them did really well even in the areas they were concerned with, a couple of them were spot-on with what they said they needed to work on, and then a few of the answers were just a bit too general to provide solid feedback (Reminder: always be PAINFULLY clear when giving any type of directions!!)
I might do this again, but I think in a setting in which I have a class consistently and can set up my own room it might be more effective (?) to just have a box FOR this type of thing and remind them each day that they have the option of adding to it so that (a) I don't have to go through 120 responses every day and (b) if they have a pressing question THAT DAY they will always have an easy, direct, alternate-route avenue to getting it adressed, not just on special days when I ask.
Overall this was a good exercise, but hopefully the base idea could be applied more constructively. We shall see.
posted by Miss Marshwater at 7:56 PM
1 Comments:
I think the box idea would work in the fall. Give it a try.
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