I’ve been inspired. My CP students made excellent use of their limited time to complete their author page last week. The results were phenomenal. Most groups made a very detailed, easy to read page that will be a useful resource for myself and their peers. The next day, they made brief presentations about their author to entice their classmates to read their page. I then surprised them with the announcement of a quiz for the following day. This prompted paying attention to the presentations and reading the pages. The quiz was simple and students were allowed to hunt for the answers on their peers’ pages. The quiz was on the moodle, so I was able to easily gather feedback about student scores. It worked great! A quick and easy way to assess DYRT (did you read this) that increased motivation to pay attention.
Students were then asked to discuss the Romantic period on Thursday using four different forum options and connect the period to their life. Most of the responses were very insightful, detailed and relevant. Some were not – but with the power of “delete,” I took care of those.
My sophomore class is working on a paper to tie up Julius Caesar. The positive results I have witnessed with this group is that they worked together well to gather evidence. They are also using me as a resource as often as possible – which is good, but like babies, they must be weaned from their mother. They students are demonstrating good knowledge of events in the text and how they can use them to prove their point, which is the objective of the assignment. I am able to help them locate these events and show how they can weave quotations into their writing. This is practice for the large research paper they will have to write shortly.
