Feb

4

What Mark Do You Want in This Class? Ok, Sign Here

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Evaluation, Special Education | Leave a Comment

Contract I really like Todd’s grade contract because it gives kids hope and the feeling of being having some control of their lives. Reading Todd’s post reminded me of something that I had done early in my teaching career. At that time , I was teaching grades nine to twelve at a vocational secondary school. As a special education teacher with a specialist in behaviour, I was assigned to help students who got kicked out of their regular classes and were timetabled to work with me to help rescue their credits. I found that I had the best results when I would get students to contract for a mark that they wanted. I had students sign a very formal looking contract printed on special paper with all the expectations outlined in detail. For an A, I will complete …, For a B, I will complete… etc. I found students responded very well -remember all things are relative- they didn’t tell me to f*** off when I introduced the contract. I told them they didn’t need to worry about getting anything more than a D, (this took them by surprise) although their final mark could be an A, B, C or D. They couldn’t contract for less than a D. Failure was not an option. I know we’re supposed to aim high, but high for these kids was a pass.

I had it set up so that for a D, the student would have to meet the minimum expectations for that course. The expectations rose as did the mark. Not surprisingly, most students would contract for the minimum D. But as they became more successful , they would ask to renegotiate the contract for a higher final mark. My department head at that time told me to create assignments that were totally different from those in the regular classroom. He said it was important the assignments be different so that the students wouldn’t be reminded of their failure in the regular classroom. I vaguely remember one assignment that I created for a student that had him plan a trip to Florida over March break with his friends. He had to determine the cost of the trip and show the route they would take. It was a good basic math exercise because he had to determine the cost of going from Oakville, Ontario to some place in Florida - Fort Lauderdale I think. I can’t remember exactly where. But, he had to determine the cost of getting there by car or plane, the cost of his over night stays, the cost of his food, entertainment etc. He also had to find out the average temperature and rain fall at his destination and plan an appropriate wardrobe to take along. I can still see him sitting at a table with his tough macho exterior colouring a map and highlighting his route while telling me he and his friends would sleep in the car or on the beach so they could save money for lots of beer and still stay within his budget.

Working with those students was a real eye opener. Remember that was early in my career. Now after all these years and after teaching young offenders in open and closed custody facilities, my eyes are wide open. Nothing, absolutely nothing surprises or shocks me anymore.

Jan

29

It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Dealing With Stress, Evaluation, The Way I See It, Useful Handouts | Leave a Comment

homeworkHomework
It seems that the debate about homework is gathering speed. I wrote about it here last December, and I was interested to read Doug’s idea for taking the sting out of homework. He has his students blogging their History homework! I think Doug is going to have a problem: he’s going to kids lining up to take his History class.

Taking Care of Yourselfjumping through hoopd
It’s the end of semester and tomorrow is the deadline for marks so of course there would be problems with computers and printers. What did we expect? Teachers were running around everywhere (not me thankfully) looking for computers and printers that would work. Talk about stress. I wanted to grab them and have them read David’s post “How to Be Good to Yourself”, but that would have just added to their stess. So, I think I’ll just wait until things calm down a bit.

Reflecting Back (Can you say reflecting back, or is that redundant?)
Today I was reflecting upon the past semester and what worked well and what could have worked better. In all the hurly-burly of the last day of classes, I forgot to ask my students to give me my report card on how I did as a teacher. Mind you my group of kids don’t hesitate to tell me what they like or don’t like and that’s ok with me because as long as we get the job done I don’t really care how we do it. I’m open to suggestions if they don’t like my suggestion. I just tell them what the outcome has to be, how we get there is open to discussion. The only stipulation is that we get there. I like Dustin’s philosophy for managing his classroom and his Course Evaluation Handout, too. It would give valuable feedback. In fact, I like it better than the one I was using. Thanks for sharing, Dustin. A+

Jan

14

An Alternative Way To Assess Math

Filed Under Evaluation | 10 Comments

sheepAn Alternative Way to Assess Math. Yeah, I know that’s not a very sexy title but before you start to yawn , check out Dan Meyer’s cool take on assessing math. Although Dan’s a math teacher and uses it to access math, I think it could be used to access English as well.( I can see check lists of English concepts or skills in my head as I type these words.) For that matter, all subjects have concepts and skills students need to master so all subjects could use Dan’s idea. I think it’s a matter of taking the good and useful in Dan’s idea for math and then tweaking it a bit so that it could be used in other subjects. I think it important to keep an open mind.
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Some of my students have difficulty writing essays. I could create a list of skills for essay writing, and if a student hasn’t mastered one of those skills like writing a good introductory paragraph, I could return the essay, reteach the concept and ask the student to resubmit the opening paragraph. I see check lists for punctuation, grammar, etc. Mind you, it would take time to set this all up, but I think it would be worth it because then the kids could see what skills they’ve mastered. Often when you ask students what they’ve learned in class they’ll say nothing. They don’t realize they are learning things. The check list that they keep in their notebook is proof that are. I sometimes will tell my students they cannot leave my class until they tell me one thing that they have learned in my class. At first they panic. Then they start to think and laugh because they can’t think of anything. By the third time I do this, everyone has learned something in my class and leaves the class laughing. I tell them it’s their responsibility to learn something in each of their classes each day. If they don’t do that they are being unfair to themselves.

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