Week 12

This week in Reading I decided to change up the activities a bit. The kids are splitting themselves up into groups of 3-4, and their assignment is to work collaboratively to create a skit. They will be responsible for recalling any recent major events in the novel Tears of a Tiger and working together to make a prediction of what may occur next. Some of the students are really working well together while other groups have to constantly be redirected and refocused. I've also created a rubric to evaluate the skits; were I to do this lesson over, I would be sure to give a copy of the rubric to each student before they began working. (I'll remember to do this next time!) I'm anxious to see how the skits turned out!

This week has been the culminating week for the infamous Digital stories that we've been working on since the SECOND week of school (*Big sigh of relief*)! Those very few students who were ready to present on Monday--the day it was due-- had done fairly well on their slide shows. From Tuesday on, however, the presentations continued to fall in sufficiency. By the time we had reached Thursday and Friday, many of the presenting students were lacking voice-overs, music, and transitions. Many students between the classes simply came in empty handed; they had no problems receiving zeros, I suppose. All of the English teachers are at a lack for words; how can so many students have done so little work? They have had over two months to work on this assignment, and I truly do not believe the amount of work was too great by any means. So many students were scrambling at the last minute to attempt to complete their work, and we teachers (4) were unable to help all at once! It was frustrating for me that the students would be so frustrated when I didn't have 10 hands to help 10 kids at the same time! Had they been responsible, followed instructions, and completed classwork at the appropriate times, they would not be in that situation! I was under the impression that the students feel this is another "stupid" assignment that the teachers come up with for the sole purpose of lowering their grades; my host teacher and I explained many times that this was a Tech-Step that was required by the state of West Virginia.