Grading Homework

Submitted by shabam on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 12:49

Do you grade the homework you assign your students? Some teachers do, and some don't. They each have reasons for doing, or not doing it. I personally believe that if I am going to assign it, I should grade it. But i the students are given a lot of homework, this can be tedious.

When I give homework, I want to make sure that students are understanding it. Some teachers say that they give it a look over when they receive it and that is enough. That can tell you if the class got it, but it does not give you a very fine grained detail into how they are doing as a student. For instance, if I grade the homework, I can put that data into a spreadsheet and see which students are doing well on what. It gives me a lot more data to work with in teaching my students.

Of course, if you are not differentiating you lessons, then this may be less important to you. You may not care that Joey is not understanding the math basics. You may not care the Rhonda does not read the instructions, but just guesses at the work. You may not care about the kind of detailed information you can get by looking over your students work. The notes you take and the scores you give can also give you an idea of which students are meeting the standards.

Yes, this is hard work. But did you go into teaching thinking it was going to be easy? I am working on a database that will keep all the standards I'm responsible for teaching. I can then include my lessons and which standards are taught, and the homework and activities and which standards the students are grasping based on that. With this information that I gather throughout the year, I can then do report cards easily and give detailed notes to the parents. If a student needs special education services, I'll see it sooner and have detailed notes on how they are progressing. I'll also be able to look back and say "hey, my students have already mastered that skill, I'll just give a brief overview of it and move on to the next lesson" allowing me to skip entire lessons.

This is just my opinion, and I'm still a student teacher, so I may be naive. Please feel free to comment and tell me your opinions!

Hope for kid friendly movies

Submitted by shabam on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 22:27

Over the past 20 years data has been collected on what movies sell well and how much they make. If you are in a school like mine, you probably hear a lot of talk about movies that elementary students should not be watching. Things like Alien vs Predator and the like. I am happy to have found out that the chances of a violent movie making big bucks is a lot slimmer than the chances of a family friendly show making money.

World Net Daily News reports that G rated movies made 438% more than R rated movies with G movies raking in $92.2 million and R only $17.1 million on average.

I don't go to the movies very often, but I don't actually remember the last time I saw an R rated movie. Most have been G or PG with an occational PG-13.

Teaching time

Submitted by shabam on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 20:12

With analog clocks becoming passe and digital clocks everywhere, our students often don't learn how to tell time. This is an important skill that they need, so we need to have some fun ways to help them learn. I created a simple lesson that I'll describe here. I did not write up a formal lesson plan for this, but I think it is simple enough to not need one. I did alter this from a lesson I found elsewhere, but I don't remember where to credit them.

Materials: 12 notecards, numbered 1 thru 12.

First, clear the floor in the classroom. Alternatively, take them to the gym or outside. Have them form a circle. Pass out the 12, 3, 6 and 9 in the right locations. Assign two students to be your minute and hour hands.

First have your minute hand point at 12, and have your hour hand point at the 4 numbers you have out and have the students tell you what time it is. You can talk about how the hour hand points at the hour and to find the minutes you count by fives.

Next have the minute hand point at some of the other times in the circle. At this point they will need to be able to tell the 15's, 30's, and 45's as well as hours. It will depend on your students if you go further than this. If you students get the quarter hours well, add in the rest of the numbers and have them start doing this with the 5's. I would not go for minutes in this method.

When I did this lesson, I also reinforced it with a powerpoint. I collected a bunch of pictures of clocks. I put them in an order from easy to more difficult. Scaffolding and helping as you go, have them tell the times. I do not have copyright clearance on the pictures, so I am not including it here. I am going to make one with my own pictures, but that might take some time.

I suggest that to make sure that everyone gets the repetitions they need, give them a moment to think about the time, get it in their head, and then have them tell you the time all at one time. This way everyone is getting more repetitions.

New blog

Submitted by shabam on Sun, 04/27/2008 - 07:39

Good day and welcome to the initial issue of the Shabam School Blog!
I have been running a growing blog over on my other site, tiredgarden.info for a couple months. I'm very passionate about sustainable practices and that site is my soap box for that. Now it is time for my soap box on education to get some attention.

I have not done much on this site, and now I'm going to start more work on it. The blog is the first step. I'll be posting links to other news articles that are interesting, and I'll write original content as well.

The next step is to create some useful tools for teachers. What tools I include will depend on what I feel like doing. The first item I'll be creating is a bingo board generator. I want one for time bingo, and was not able to find one that I liked. So, I'm creating it. I'll make it do other types of bingo as well, but since I want one for time, that is where I'll start.

What tools come next... we will see. :) If you have any suggestions, comments, complaints, whatever, either post a reply here, or use the contact form.