Sunday, December 03, 2006

I think it was a long week

Last week ended pretty well. I was very pleased at the number of final essays turned in. It wasn't at 100%, but it was much closer than in the past. Progress!!

Also, I shocked myself by taking time on Friday, one mere day after the turn-in, to grade two whole classes' worth of essays!! Shocker. But in a good way!

On Friday I taught my classes the Three Easy Steps of multiple choice (Preview and underline, Read and underline, Answer and refer back). I explicitly modeled this with an entire passage and questions. I marked up my copy, explaining why, and the kids did the same. They saw me easily figure out the answers and not get tricked, because I'd previewed questions.

It took a long time, but I think it was definitely worth it to work through the whole section. Because when I was done, I set them on the next section. And by god, nearly all of them immediately started the same process I had modeled! When they had finished, I asked them how they thought it went. Many of them looked surprised, or said, how much easier and faster it went. Whee!

It is December. What?! I looked at the calendar a little while ago and saw that there are only three weeks left of school before the break. Which means four weeks until I leave for Amsterdam. Yay for real me, boo for teacher me!

This week I hope to get in the last of the testing skills that I haven't yet worked on. Not only that, but reinforce the things we've already done. I hope to start doing online work with assessment, and I've already assigned differentiated homework. I'll try to do more of that as well.

Also this week I want to start timing them. I've got a ton of old testing booklets and a bunch of test skills books, so we've got plenty of materials to work with.

I'm not worried about interesting lessons at this point, because I don't have the energy and we just need to get through things. Three weeks this month, and then less than two weeks in January. Power through!

1 comment:

Fred said...

No interesting lessons here. It's what we call "dead week", where absolutely nothing is done other than semester review sessions.

Exams next week, then off for almost three weeks!