As a teacher you learn a lot about your students such as how they learn, what their interests are, what their talents are, what their levels of reading/math/science etc. You also know when a student has put in their best efforts or when they can do better. Its the teachers job to know their potential and push past it. After school today I was grading projects for students based on a rubric. For me it was a bit more difficult because I haven't yet learned all the students potential yet. I have seen some of their work, but not enough to know when they are really trying their hardest and when they are just doing the basics. During this time I also thought a lot about equality, or really how we can't grade all students at an equal level. For example one student in the class normally has really sloppy hand writing and it's hard to read(Mostly because they zip through everything because it's often easy for them). I noticed this student was the only one to have two pages of writing and his picture had a lot of detail, but to a passer by it looked like scribbling in some parts. The scale was 1 - 3+. 3+ being that the student couldn't have done any better. For the content part of the work it was no doubt a 3+ because the student had all that was asked and then some. The hard part for me was to determine how to score the picture. I asked the CT and he told me a little more about the student and then we came to the conclusion it was at least a 3. Now remember I said to a passer-by it didn't look like a master piece and with out knowing the student I would have given it a 2. Now if another one of the students who I know is an out standing artist did this work I would have definitely gave it a 2. That doesn't really seem fair, or does it? I think that as teachers, who know their students well, we should grade work based on the student and his/her potential is. I think this allows for both challenge to the students because we know what they can do, but it doesn't make an assignment seem impossible for others who might not be so great at writing or art. It's the teachers job to scaffold students at just the right level. (I also really like rubrics for grading but that will be in different blog)
Technology can be a teachers best friend or it can be a great enemy. For spelling we are starting to use 'words their way' and my CT found an awesome website - spellingcity.com - for the students to use and practice their words. The site offers teachers the ability to add multiple lists for ability grouping. The students were going to use the laptops, log on, find spellingcity and start playing. That's how it was supposed to go. Well after we started up it seemed that we should have done some more pre-teaching first. I had at least 10 students ask where to find the site (we told them yesterday how to find it), some students were unsure of how to log on or what to do if it didn't work right away etc. Well 3 of the students were not able to log on to the computers at all and it took most of the time trying to figure out why (which we never did). A few of the computers were dead and we had to switch out batteries. And some of the computers wouldn't access the internet. All of this caused our 20 min time on the computer to last about double that and run into our reading time. Like I said before it can be your best friend, and it was for the students that it worked for it was. But it was our enemy because it wasted our time, and caused the rest of the schedule to be off especially since we already had a half day.
One thing that I really like for classroom management is that each student has a number. The number was assigned by using alphabetic order. The numbers are then used to keep order with materials. Their reading, social studies and math text books all have a number. This allows for the students to quickly grab their book when asked and begin working. The numbers are also used for homework. Next to their name they write their number. Then we are able to put the pages in order when they turn it in and can easily tell who has done it and who still needs to turn it in. I think that having order in a classroom is important for management as well as for the students. It helps teach them about how to be organized in order to better succeed later in life.
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