Although I think a system I’ve been using to encourage students to keep good notebooks works really well for me, and might even work well for students, I am not exactly sure what they’re writing down and whether or not they are truly using their notebooks to the greatest capacity. Therefore, I am going to…
Update: This blog post reflects a view I held mainly because I worked for a principal who discouraged me from taking late work (among other things that are also bad ideas). I strongly advocate for taking students’ work late now. You never know what they’re going through. Not accepting late work, ever, for any reason,…
I am curious as to your policies regarding late work. Will you take a moment and answer this poll (if you are so inclined)? Feel free to elaborate on your answers in the comments if you wish. The poll expires Monday evening.
This week I am caught up on grading. I’ve seen lots of talk out there among the English Edublogosphere and Twitter about feedback on student writing. Something I do about once a semester is type comments as I read a student’s writing. I usually wind up with about a page when I’m done. It’s like…
Georgia did away with the D in its public schools a long time ago. The reason I know this is that when I moved to Georgia as a junior in high school, which was almost exactly twenty years ago, I had a D in biology on my transcript, and my counselor explained that because it…
Of the four classes I am taking this semester (three one-hour classes and one three-hour class), I have finished the work in three. That means I have just one more class to finish, and I will be done with the semester. Hopefully I can tidy that up this weekend and finish early. I expect to…
Via this week’s NCTE Inbox, I read an article about an experiment in assessment that English teacher John O’Connor tried. After spending 15 hours carefully crafting comments on a class set of papers, there’s nothing more depressing than to see those papers parachute, unread, into the recycling bin at the end of class. This past…
A conversation*: “Mrs. Huff, are we going to do another project soon?” “Fairly soon. I want to finish The Iliad.” “I really like projects. I think they’re better than quizzes or tests because you really think about it and analyze it more.” “I agree.” “Plus I know when I study tests, I might do fine,…
I’ve said this every year, but I’ll say it again: you sure can tell when school starts again around this blog. Anyway, our students come back on Wednesday, and my own children went back today, so I feel like we’re all back in the saddle. Meanwhile, I’ve had a few new visitors coming by looking…
Regular readers of my blog know I am really invested in backward design (Understanding by Design or UbD). I have several UbD units posted over at the UbD Educators wiki, but I decided maybe I should explain them a little bit more just in case you are interested in using them. After I wrote my…
