And it is finished. I walked out of Central Middle School today with a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth. All of those hours of experience, frustration, planning, implementing, and joy are all wrapped up and finished. On the one hand I am so excited to be done, do have my day a little freed up, but I am also already missing those students. One student told me today, "You better come back!" an offer I could hardly refuse. It is so interesting to see just how attached a student is to you. They wouldn't otherwise say a word to you about it but when you're halfway out the door their true feelings about you rush forth.
Tuesday I presented a peer editing lesson that would be later coupled with a peer editing activity but unfortunately the activity never came. The biggest struggle that I had with my class was to motivate them to finish their work. Every single student had missing or late assignments. A big theme that I was working over in my mind was how to motivate and encourage students to finish their work. Frivolous assignments not being turned in was understandable but large essays and projects was unthinkable. Challenging students to develop good work ethic and demonstrate importance is all on my shoulders as a teacher.
There was not a day that went by during this experience that I thought to myself, "why am I doing this?" Every single day was an affirmation that I want to become a teacher and make lasting impacts academically and emotionally on all of my students. Thank you so much to Central Middle School, Ms. Danger, the 4th period Language Arts class, Ashley Jorgensen, and all of those who helped encourage me and challenge me throughout this whole process.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Week 5: The end is drawing near
This week I had my first experience correcting papers. The class assignment was to write a narrative, which is extremely broad. All of the students chose a topic of their choice but were given strict guidelines in their rubric about formatting, style, and description. For the most part the assignment was centered around using description in the story.
After correcting the class' narratives I found out that they did not do very well at the objective, actually the completely failed it. Although they failed that one aspect of the rubric their narratives were excellent stories. Trying to grade creative writing, because after all that is what the assignment was, is quite challenging. I absolutely enjoyed all of their narratives. I could tell that the students enjoyed the assignment but they neglected to look at their rubrics.
So what have I learned from this experience? Personally I will not assess an assignment that is creative in nature with strict guidelines about content but rather format and style. Something like a creative writing project is tough to grade because a writer puts out their own emotion into the writing. It is a tragedy to grade it, to write on it.
After correcting the class' narratives I found out that they did not do very well at the objective, actually the completely failed it. Although they failed that one aspect of the rubric their narratives were excellent stories. Trying to grade creative writing, because after all that is what the assignment was, is quite challenging. I absolutely enjoyed all of their narratives. I could tell that the students enjoyed the assignment but they neglected to look at their rubrics.
So what have I learned from this experience? Personally I will not assess an assignment that is creative in nature with strict guidelines about content but rather format and style. Something like a creative writing project is tough to grade because a writer puts out their own emotion into the writing. It is a tragedy to grade it, to write on it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)