Red days are like the beginning of a new cycle since the students are with us every 2 of 3 days. Somehow, my planning worked out that I'll finish summarizing with my English 12 classes at the end of this "cycle". I would like to say I planned that perfectly, but its was purely dumb luck.
We covered summarizing today, comparing it to paraphrasing and discussing how to summarize without plagiarizing. We reviewed paraphrasing, discussed summarizing as a class, I modeled it, then they did an activity to prove to me they could do both and differentiate between the two. I had a paraphrasing homework due today, and had them do the paraphrasing activity in class, so I foolishly left myself with couple hours worth of grading tonight. Since tomorrow I am doing a writing exercise with paraphrasing and summarizing, I needed to see if they grasped the concepts first. Thankfully, they have a good handle on it, so we can get to the writing tomorrow, but right now I'm regretting putting myself under the mountain of papers. I am very happy with their progress at this point though. I have made some changes to how I am teaching the material this year, taking baby steps right now so they can walk on their own when we begin to write in the upcoming weeks. This year, my classes seem to have better handle of what we are doing than last my classes did last year. I am not sure if the students are just a brighter breed or if my changes in how I am teaching the material is really that much more effective, but I'm confident my students are going to be ready to write, and to write well. I can't say I felt that way all the time last year. As cocky as I may be, I am not foolish enough to believe this is all me, but maybe, just maybe, I am doing a better job at teaching this year.
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