In addition to conveying our subject matter, I think it is critical that teachers help students learn good study skills, such as note-taking and test-taking strategies and organization skills. One thing I have noticed about organization over my years as a teacher is that a really organized student can usually do fairly well, even if…
As I wrote previously, I planned to conduct a Socratic Seminar focused on this question: Who was most responsible for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet? We held our discussion today. One student arrived early to help me move the desks to the side. We put the chairs in a big circle. The students came…
This is my ninth year teaching (tenth, if you count the year I taught pre-K, but for our purposes today, I won’t). I have been caught up on grading once this year. I have yet to figure out how to manage my piles of papers so that I do not constantly have a stack of…
I received my complimentary author’s copies of English Journal, July 2006 (Vol. 95, No. 6) in the mail today. It was very exciting to see my writing, complete with pullout quotes and minibiography at the end. I must say that it is very exciting for me to be published in a journal. It makes me…
I was poking around English Journal‘s web site to see if I could figure out when the July issue (containing my article) was coming out, and I found Alfie Kohn’s article “The Trouble with Rubrics” (PDF). On one point, I agree with Kohn — I wish we didn’t have to assign letter grades to students,…
Man, I’m ready for this end-of-year dance to be over. The last couple of weeks of school are so hard. That sounded like stating the obvious. I’m under some pressure; partly, I can’t tell if it’s all in my head and of my own making, or something I should be really freaking out about. I…
I want to thank everyone for linking and responding to my collaboration with Anthony Ferraro. It’s just the beginning, as I’m still really thinking about the issue of assessment. Stay tuned.
Recently, I wrote a post in which I included the following lament about grade inflation: I would say that my grading is tough, but fair. I feel as if I am in line with my school and department in that area. However, students expect to make A’s and B’s. In fact, students in Honors classes…
Well, as predicted, when I handed back final drafts of the research paper, there were some unhappy campers. As I explained in a previous post, students at my school are very focused on grades. There is a feeling of entitlement to A’s and B’s. It is frustrating because my personal philosophy has always run much…
We had a faculty learning session during our weekly meeting time this morning. You might recall that we were asked to select, read, and think about an article on assessment provided to us. Today we broke into groups based upon our article of interest. My group consisted of my principal, a Judaics teacher, a history…
