3/29

Here is some more information from the students on the last self graded test. All the students said that they had a better understand because every problem they missed, they had to go through the problem and find out what they missed. Most of the tests that they have gotten back in the past, the students look at the grade that is on the top of the paper and do not spend much if any time going back over the test to find out what they missed. What a great idea for the students to learn from their own mistakes.

3/21

Another test and another effort to change the norm. I had a test in my Algebra class last Monday. On Friday, I told the students that I was going to pass the test back to them to make corrections on it. Many of the students were able to find their own mistakes without me showing what they missed. I then allowed the students to work with a partner to try to make some further corrections on their test. The students did all the corrections in red pen so that I could see how many changes they made after the initial testing period. I then let the students grade their own tests. We determined as a class that each problem was going to worth 3 points and they would mark each problem where they missed and how many points off they deserve. I looked back over the tests to see how well the students graded their test and I only had to make a few corrections. The scores ranged from a 51% to a 101% and most students agreed that their score represented the amount of knowledge from Ch 9. All students agreed that they had a better understanding of the material after working on the test in that way.

3/16

I was reading a post on the Fischbowl and also reading me emails about the homework assignments when I came across an article that Pat Wilson sent to me. It is about the attitude and lack of effort of our students. It got me thinking about all the work that all of us are putting into this class to try and become better teachers. I am just wondering what our students are going to do in respnse. Here is a link to the article that my give more insight: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060308/oplede08.art.htm#
I am wondering how many of you agree with this article. If you do, how does this make you feel about all the work that we are doing to get better?

3/7

I talked with my Advanced Algebra classes about their thoughts of how the class was working for them. In my first hour, they wanted to return to a more traditional approach where they could ask me questions at the start of the hour about their homework. The compromise was made that they would work with partners on M,W and F and I would answer questions on T and R during the week. I did suggest that if there were some students that wanted to ask their partners about questions, they should feel they can do this at anytime. I talked with my second hour about the same thing and there was a unanimous decision to continue running class the same way by working with partners every day. Each class strongly believed that it would work best for them if the class was able to adapt. I hope that each class can be successful in their own ways.

3/6 conferences

I heard a lot of positive feedback from parents about some of the changes in class this semester. They seemed to like that their students were getting much more individual attention from other students in the class. Many of the parents also liked the comments on the grades that showed missing assignements and careless mistakes on tests. I did hear from a couple of parents that were not too happy with students learning from other students. They were very understanding of why I implemented the policy and even thought it was a good idea, but just asked that I work with their child a little more because they were more comfortable hearing it from a teacher. All in all it was good to hear some positive feedback that some of the changes might actually be working.