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Surviving January – 4
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12 thoughts on “Surviving January – 4”
My ICSR is practically 100% of their grade. The Interpretive Comm Skills part of my rubric, as yours, at 25%, captures the whole group reading stuff we do during those Reading Options days. But, basically the same whole group interaction applies. Then, the 10% for Presentational Comm Skills gives students an easy A when they simply keep their pencil on their papers and don’t talk to others during the Free Writes.
Or, a Quick Quiz, where everyone gets an A because we go over the answers– a la Tina: I give the either/or statement once, students think and write an answer, then I give that either/or statement a second time and students can shout out the answer. Those are Interpretive Comm Skills grades too. It’s working. I’m able to keep those kids that are only motivated by grades at a 89% or 79% until the end of the year when I’ll bump them up to an A or a B.
One thing I have been doing is do the quick quizzes sometimes with https://www.zipgrade.com/ (It’s basically a scantron that you can grade on your phone).
Being that our kids take ACT and standardized testing and our parents love those tests, giving a quick quiz with a scantron will make the quiz look super-official.
For the population I teach, the more academic and traditional things lower the less stress on the teacher.
Sean said:
…I’m able to keep those kids that are only motivated by grades at a 89% or 79% until the end of the year when I’ll bump them up to an A or a B….
This is easily attacked by others who have forgotten why they are teachers but it is a brilliant and defensible move.
I had a student ask me today how he can get 100% in my class, since numerically, it’s not possible, since the highest jGR grade is a 95%. It kind of put me on the spot, but an answer kind of stumbled out of me. I basically said that 100% is perfection and it’s hard to be perfect in this class or something to that effect, but a 95% is still a high and exemplary grade. I’m sure there’s a more articulate way of putting it, but that’s what came out. I did say if he had more questions about it after class, I’d talk to him then. I already have a student to whom I’ve given extra work to in order to bump up her grade to 100%. That was an individual thing I set up with her last semester. Any thoughts on how to address these types of questions?
Your answer was great, excellent.
But I have a few further suggestions/observations on how to deal with those kids who “need” (something sick about that) a 100% in the class:
1. Make this the ONLY time you offer extra credit and give them some kind of task to earn those extra five points which you would just add on by overriding the computer when you post grades.
2. An aside: offering extra credit to a kid who is sitting on a D or F at the end of the term should never be done.
3. Make them work for those five % points.
4. One excellent option is to give all kids who really did their jobs well five % points for simply doing their jobs really well. Did this kid have a job and how did they do it?
In general don’t refuse kids who want to go to 100%. Just casually ask them how they have helped YOU in class during the grading period. Let’s teach them that it’s not (expletive deleted) always about them.
Got it. I’m glad you thought the answer sufficed. I had a girl do this last semester, but she did it one-on-one with me. I do much better one-on-one. This guy asked during class, so what came out was unscripted and wobbly. Per your suggestion last semester, I did that with one girl and that worked fine. I doubt this guy’s going to actually come outside of class and ask me about it though even though he’s a good student.
This isn’t necessarily relevant to this thread, but still related to beginning of the year/semester. I had a student, who’s snarky and rude sometimes, say something during class about the rubric seeming “elementary school” (giving letter/number designations representing numerical values, like getting an “S+” for something instead of an “95%”). I also had one student, who at the beginning of last semester, called my class “childish” and “elementary school”. I teach high school btw. Have any of you who use the Invisibles get comments like that? How have you responded to those comments? Thanks!
Yes. Jake, please understand that such comments are defensive attempts to position themselves against your request that they act more like human beings and not robots in your classroom.
That’s what this is about. You are not teaching in a childish way, and even if you were, are they not in fact CHILDREN in their language learning careers?
These kids have long ago figured out how to game the system and cast vague insults at teachers in order to not have to GROW as human beings and open up and be vulnerable, which is what this work with CI REQUIRES of students.
It’s not easy to learn to be open to CI for kids. For decades all that they have ever been required to do is robotic memorization, and now you are asking them to show up as human beings in your classroom and they LITERALLY CANNOT DO IT so they strike out at you.
I would have SLAMMED that kid for his comments. But notice – it’s only one scared robotic kid who doesn’t want to do the internal growth. For every one of those there are ten who silently admire what you are doing.
(OK maybe in your particular school there in Kansas City, only five. But you get the point. Stick to your guns. You are doing important work. I am very positive about your future in language education if you can get through this your first year, as a follow up comment to our earlier private email conversation this morning.)
Yes I know it was a veiled insult, and I wanted to nail him, but I didn’t know exactly what to say in that moment. Looking back I would have just said I wasn’t going to answer the question because he didn’t genuinely want to know. I just answered his question honestly, showing him it wasn’t elementary at all and why. I try to exude a calm demeanor and in doing so, I sometimes miss those situations when I need to pounce.
Best to say nothing, we all know that. It depends on so many factors. Obviously a teacher who has been in a school w no problems for ten years can react differently than to keep their tail between their legs.
Quite a profession we’ve chosen, n’est-ce pas?
Oui c’est tres curieux.
Sometimes I think that the ones who are in the profession now (but not part of the herd mentality and actually trying to align WL classroom instruction according to the research) are always going to feel a bit like fish out of water. It’s that way with all great changes in society. If we stick to the guns and just keep going to work every day, we will see that what we are doing is important, and has the potential to be of immense help to society. We may not know it now, but we are busting up old concretized forms of thinking about WL teaching, and that doesn’t come without our having to inhale large amounts of concrete dust. We’ll leave it to the politicians to say they didn’t inhale. We as teachers are inhaling away, because we believe that kids don’t need to suffer like they are now at the hands of shitty language teachers who aren’t even aware of how shitty their traditional approach, bless their hearts.