I was pretty happy with classes today. Read 180 is continuing to go well and the kids are adjusting to the routine. Tomorrow I have them in the lab section again, so we will continue our development of basic writing. In my English 12 classes, we reviewed main idea and started on supporting details. We started by finding them in pieces of writing, then I ended the day by having them write their own 8-10 sentence paragraph with a specific main idea and supporting sentences. It was a topic with meaning to them (How the new school schedule has affected them), so they should have been able to give plenty of support for the topic. I'll guess I'll find out when I grade them tomorrow night.
One cool thing I did was use a website called socrative.com for my Chromebook class. It allows all the students to log in, and I can ask a question, then they can respond on the site and I see the results. Everyone was able to participate and I was able to see instant feedback. I am able to make quizzes and other assessments on the site, and get immediate feedback on my iPad as we work in class. I probably won't make quizzes on the site because it is just an extra step to grade (and I can do that on our grading system Skyward, or as some of us call it Skynet), but I like that I can ask a question, have every student answer, and get immediate feedback on my iPad or computer. I will probably use this a quite a bit. I still need to figure out an effective way move their daily bell work online where I can assign it and grade it easily. I may just keep it old school for now, or I may change up their bell work to daily writing prompts where they have to write on a topic of their choice and keep the document all year. I could do this on Google docs and check it all the time to keep them accountable. Wouldn't be too difficult to do, but I want to make sure all my students are 100% up on their Chromebooks. Regarding the Chromebooks, it is very cool to be sitting at home and get an email stating one of my students submitted their current assignment via Google docs. The kids are actually working to get stuff done!
One big frustration is not having a daily prep. I worked for my entire prep, all 70 minutes doing work, not messing around at all, and I still only got maybe 2 days ahead. I didn't even have any grading to do today. I got quite a bit done, but I felt like I should be able to get more done in 70 minutes. Maybe it's all mental knowing I wont have a prep tomorrow and all, but I'm not used to it yet. Teaching from 7:25-2:20 with only about a 30 minute lunch, then straight to soccer practice is brutal. I'm looking forward to game days so I get a little more of a break. I'm making it though, and will continue to keep calm and teach on.
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