Monday: This week will I will give my first set of final exams: first to my shelter class and then to my TOEFL class. My shelter class exam will be a simple test of basic grammar, but with a short essay response to add a little something more to the exam. My TOEFL test will have students reading an academic passage and answering questions; responding in an essay to a question; and responding by speaking to a different question. These are all things that they will have to do on the actual TOEFL test and it's what we've been practicing for the last five weeks.
Thursday Night: I started this post on Monday morning and never got a chance to finish it. My exams on Wednesday went well. I began grading part of the test and they appear to have done just fine. One section of my exam was a speaking section - this is where I truly learned how well my students might do on their actual TOEFL exam. What they had to do was prepare notes in response to a question and then give a oral response to the question. I graded it on a scale of 1 to 5: I had no 1s and no 2s, a couple of 3s, mostly 4s, and about five 5s. I was pretty happy with the results, but some of my students still have a lot of work to do before they try to take the TOEFL exam. This is where I think my class website might help some of them out. On my website I have included my e-mail address so students can ask me questions and I have also listed useful websites for them to use for preparation. I hope that some of my students try to contact me in the future with questions or concerns about the TOEFL Test. It would mean a lot to me if I could help them in some way.
Next week is my final week with my other classes. With Quinto Secretariado I will be watching an English movie. With Cuarto Secretariado I will be practicing their spelling skills in preparation for their final exam. During the rest of my time at school I will be working on finishing my grading for Quinto Ciencias and for my other classes as well.
Well, I'll try to write again later this weekend or next week. Perhaps I'll be able to put up more of my activities/lesson plans.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Pictures from "Create Your Own Planet"
It's a little messier than I would like, but here they are. And by messy, I mean the layout of this blog post -- not my students work. I was incredibly impressed by what they did. I even created my own poster to display with theirs in class (my poster is the one titled, "Fryce").
Cheers.
"Create Your Own Planet" Assignment
Here is an assignment guide that I created for my lesson: "Create Your Own Planet".
For this project, students write an essay about a planet of their own creation - complete with life forms, physical characteristics, and details about the planet's discovery. Next, students create a poster or artistic representation of their planet that includes: the name of the planet, basic facts about the planet, and a description or picture of the life forms on the planet. I spaced this lesson out over two or three class periods: 1st was an Introduction Day, 2nd Poster/Writing Work Day, 3rd Presentation Day. Between the 2nd and 3rd class period was a weekend period - this allowed students plenty of time for completing their project.
Below is the lesson plan:
“Create Your Own Planet”
Instructions and Guide
Description:
This assignment consists of two main parts: first, an essay report on your planet; second, a poster displaying an image and basic information about your planet. Both the essay and the poster are worth 20 points. This assignment is due Tuesday, August 30, 2011.
Essay Instructions:
Your essay must meet the following requirements:
1. It must be one or two paragraphs long. Each paragraph must have at least three or four sentences.
2. Your essay must answer each of these questions:
a. What is the name of your planet? (Consider: describe how you developed the name or what the name means.)
b. Where is your planet located? (Consider: how far away from Earth is this planet? Is it in our solar system? Is it in a different solar system?
c. How was your planet discovered? (Consider: what is the name of the discoverer and how did he or she discover the planet – satellites, telescopes, or a manned spacecraft?)
d. What are your planet’s physical characteristics? (Consider: are the landforms similar to Earth? Are they different? Is there air to breath or another substance? Is there water?)
e. Does your planet support life?
i. If yes, describe the life forms. (Consider: are they similar to humans or completely different?)
ii. If no, describe why your planet does not support life.
Poster Instructions:
Your poster must meet the following requirements:
1. It must have a picture or a drawing of your planet. (This may be a hand drawn picture or something you create on your computer.)
2. Your poster must have each of the following:
a. The name of your planet.
b. The location of your planet.
c. The basic physical characteristics of your planet.
d. The name and a brief description (or picture) of the life forms that live on your planet.
Both your essay and your poster must also have the following:
1. Your full name
2. Your class
3. The due date of this assignment
For this project, students write an essay about a planet of their own creation - complete with life forms, physical characteristics, and details about the planet's discovery. Next, students create a poster or artistic representation of their planet that includes: the name of the planet, basic facts about the planet, and a description or picture of the life forms on the planet. I spaced this lesson out over two or three class periods: 1st was an Introduction Day, 2nd Poster/Writing Work Day, 3rd Presentation Day. Between the 2nd and 3rd class period was a weekend period - this allowed students plenty of time for completing their project.
Below is the lesson plan:
“Create Your Own Planet”
Instructions and Guide
Description:
This assignment consists of two main parts: first, an essay report on your planet; second, a poster displaying an image and basic information about your planet. Both the essay and the poster are worth 20 points. This assignment is due Tuesday, August 30, 2011.
Essay Instructions:
Your essay must meet the following requirements:
1. It must be one or two paragraphs long. Each paragraph must have at least three or four sentences.
2. Your essay must answer each of these questions:
a. What is the name of your planet? (Consider: describe how you developed the name or what the name means.)
b. Where is your planet located? (Consider: how far away from Earth is this planet? Is it in our solar system? Is it in a different solar system?
c. How was your planet discovered? (Consider: what is the name of the discoverer and how did he or she discover the planet – satellites, telescopes, or a manned spacecraft?)
d. What are your planet’s physical characteristics? (Consider: are the landforms similar to Earth? Are they different? Is there air to breath or another substance? Is there water?)
e. Does your planet support life?
i. If yes, describe the life forms. (Consider: are they similar to humans or completely different?)
ii. If no, describe why your planet does not support life.
Poster Instructions:
Your poster must meet the following requirements:
1. It must have a picture or a drawing of your planet. (This may be a hand drawn picture or something you create on your computer.)
2. Your poster must have each of the following:
a. The name of your planet.
b. The location of your planet.
c. The basic physical characteristics of your planet.
d. The name and a brief description (or picture) of the life forms that live on your planet.
Both your essay and your poster must also have the following:
1. Your full name
2. Your class
3. The due date of this assignment
Monday, September 5, 2011
Link between Teachers and students
Linking Student Data to Teachers a Complex Task, Experts Say
I got this article from Educationweek.org in a new effort to read more journal, newspaper, and scholarly articles on teaching. I hope to learn more about the issues and concerns of educators in the U.S. in preparation for a future return to the U.S. to teach. I feel this is something that my Northern Education teachers tried to impress upon me as a student, but I never fully grasped the importance of this type of study. Perhaps it was the fact that I was told or required to read only scholarly articles first and forgo articles of equal value, but with less complex jargon.
This article is about efforts to create better technologies to determine how to link teachers to students with the ultimate goal being to base some part of a teacher's overall performance on the performance of their students. I appreciate the effort by the parties involved with this project to try to develop a better way to accurately link students that actually attend class to a particular teacher (or for a teacher to select which students were actually taught by said teacher) but I still am against linking teacher pay to student performance. Especially if the final determiner is a student's performance on a standardized test. Data related to student's actual attendance does seem valuable --- what better way to demonstrate why a student is struggling if you can prove that the student is rarely present in your classroom.
Linking Student Data to Teachers a Complex Task, Experts Say
I got this article from Educationweek.org in a new effort to read more journal, newspaper, and scholarly articles on teaching. I hope to learn more about the issues and concerns of educators in the U.S. in preparation for a future return to the U.S. to teach. I feel this is something that my Northern Education teachers tried to impress upon me as a student, but I never fully grasped the importance of this type of study. Perhaps it was the fact that I was told or required to read only scholarly articles first and forgo articles of equal value, but with less complex jargon.
This article is about efforts to create better technologies to determine how to link teachers to students with the ultimate goal being to base some part of a teacher's overall performance on the performance of their students. I appreciate the effort by the parties involved with this project to try to develop a better way to accurately link students that actually attend class to a particular teacher (or for a teacher to select which students were actually taught by said teacher) but I still am against linking teacher pay to student performance. Especially if the final determiner is a student's performance on a standardized test. Data related to student's actual attendance does seem valuable --- what better way to demonstrate why a student is struggling if you can prove that the student is rarely present in your classroom.
Linking Student Data to Teachers a Complex Task, Experts Say
Friday, September 2, 2011
Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say | McClatchy
A pretty good article about small business success and failure.
Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say | McClatchy
Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say | McClatchy
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