Hump Day!

Today’s class…  I liked having time to talk through ideas, a lot to talk about.  I was intrigued by the rubric we looked at and the possibilities it opens up for students to have the power to assess their work.  I think the concept of a rubric is still foreign to many, especially those who are not in education.  A fellow BennEl teacher gave me a lesson she uses to teach her students how a rubric works.  She has students or other teachers perform row your boat 3 different ways, she directs them how to perform it ahead of time.  Her class watches and assesses each performance using a rubric and then they talk about how they assessed.  

One thing I have been mulling over is how to give students the ability to make mistakes.  I want to build in places for students to keep revisiting a process they are learning (especially in writing) so they can have the place to do a bad job and learn how to improve it but still have opportunities to try again and apply what they learned.  4^th graders do not have the stamina or the focus to redo projects many times.  Yes they could and should be pushed to rewrite or redo.  My problem is with the model of teaching writing where you have student do one report, one narrative, one persuasive essay to satisfy a portfolio.  I want to rethink how writing is taught…

What I look at for homework was 1-google drive (I’m in a google happy district so it is important)  2-social book marking (It sounds so much easier and more efficient than keeping it all on my computer) 3- I learned about blogger.  The help section has a few short videos that were quick and easy ways to learn about the mechanics of building and maintaining a blog.  I then spent some time looking at teacher and class blogs to see what they are being used for.  I found a great blog were a teacher has pages for each student showing their learning and progress (love this idea for kids to show the world what they are learning). 

http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/

A few blogs about reading and reviewing books, another thing I think I might use a blog for is to have kids talk about books

http://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/ 

And a few funny ones about the challenges/hilarity of teaching

 http://regurgitatedalphabits.blogspot.com/

http://itsnotallflowersandsausages.blogspot.com/ 

So, now I am going to see if I can add the links to those blogs…  Really testing my tech ability here.

-Arline