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Absences
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10 thoughts on “Absences”
YES, it makes sense, Ben! and THANK YOU for the feedback!
Sharon, I used to do what Ben describes, just x it out if it IS excused, but last year I started doing something that has worked beautifully for me. If a kid is gone for more than half the class (I teach block classes), and it is excused, they can do a translation for it to not affect their grade negatively. I don’t give them points when they turn in the translation, I just take the zero out and put in and X and it’s like the grade never happened for them. For the translation, I use any old reading I have laying around. I just make sure that it’s long enough so as to take them a good chunk of time to complete, like at least half hour. I have a bunch of David y Nacho readings, and tons of readings from Blaine’s LICT, ready to hand them when they come to me looking to make up that day.
The only caveat I see to this working for you is if you don’t put a grade in the book for every class period. I do for about 80% of classes, since they’re block classes. But anyways, the reading translation is quick and simple, builds their skills, and is not an attractive alternative to playing hookie.
Ben, why do you think direct translation of vocabulary is not fair?
If it is just the isolated word with no context, I agree that this is not fair, but…
if the word is printed there in the context of the class story and I ask for translation of a word, phrase or the whole passage, this seems fair to me.
Thoughts on this?
I LOVE this, Jim! It makes them SO ACCOUNTABLE for their grade! GRACIAS!
Jim, a question has occurred to me. Do you loan a dictionary to students or encourage their using internet translator? It’s possible that half my students do not have internet at home.
Either way. Whatever tools they can use.
An important note: I encourage requiring them to “write it out” on paper, either on a different piece of paper or directly under the original text lines. That way, they won’t share in the case their friend gets the same story a couple weeks later (or at least they have a lot less reason to put in the effort of typing it out), AND it will reduce the chances of them typing it ALL into google translate and then just printing that out, which will be obvious to you but some will still try and do it.
I also recommend differentiating the readings a bit to suit the kids’ levels (if you can find enough different readings. If there is a really bright kid, give him a more complicated text to translate, and vice versa.
Re how they write it for you, I think the best option is for them to write it directly underneath the TL, so that they are essentially “twexting” the reading, and therefore making connections between L1 and L2 much more. But some will say “I can’t write that small…”… then they’ll probably need to write on a different paper.
I’m thinking of when the teacher asks for translation of a single word, by itself, out of context, David. The mind gets to hear the word in the story a lot in context, but then when the quiz asks for just the word by itself, that’s what I meant as not fair in my view.
Ben, thanks for the clarification. Context is such a key here – treating words not as individual units, but as chunks of actual meaning in thoughts and stories.
So why not ask them to translate a sentence? Another form of quizzing I’ve done with early Spanish 1 is to have them make a drawing of what I’m saying… I don’t really know about brain science, but I do believe pictures require a different part of the brain.