I'm one of those teachers - the ones who accept late work while compiling the finals grades. In fact, while I was finishing everyone elses grades, one of my students sat in the classroom for 4 hours completing enough make up work to give her a 60%. Smart kid. Various family tramas. Way to interested in the social scene. I had another boy pull off a major miracle by turning in papers on Friday. I'm fairly sure that he copied someone elses work, but no wholly and have no proof, thus he'll also receive a 60%.
I had an interesting conversation with another teacher about reading evaluations. Basically, she had gone to a conference where she heard all about this fluency assessentment test and was interested to hear if I had any experience with it, which I didn't. The conversation was interesting for the ideas that I was able to plant. First, that I previously had taught a course devoted solely to improving reading (and we should have one) and that at the high school level, comprehension is more important. All of my students can read. They all read out loud - no matter how torturous - in class. The elementary school does a great job of making sure they can read the words on the page. The problem is that they don't understand most of what they read. The students never challenge themselves in reading and their vocabulary levels are low. They can barely summerize and have almost no ability to think about the text critically. Heck, most of them can't think critically period.
This year is textbook/curriculum adoption for the English Department and I think someone has finally realized the writing is on the wall for over 60% of this year's freshman. They can't pass the WASL and won't be graduating. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
I had an interesting conversation with another teacher about reading evaluations. Basically, she had gone to a conference where she heard all about this fluency assessentment test and was interested to hear if I had any experience with it, which I didn't. The conversation was interesting for the ideas that I was able to plant. First, that I previously had taught a course devoted solely to improving reading (and we should have one) and that at the high school level, comprehension is more important. All of my students can read. They all read out loud - no matter how torturous - in class. The elementary school does a great job of making sure they can read the words on the page. The problem is that they don't understand most of what they read. The students never challenge themselves in reading and their vocabulary levels are low. They can barely summerize and have almost no ability to think about the text critically. Heck, most of them can't think critically period.
This year is textbook/curriculum adoption for the English Department and I think someone has finally realized the writing is on the wall for over 60% of this year's freshman. They can't pass the WASL and won't be graduating. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
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