Summer School - Week One

Friday completed the first week of summer school. Is it what I expected? well.... yes and no.

I only have one group of students - 16 students total. That makes grading a little easier. I say "little" because even though there are only 16 students, the state writing module has them writing 4 essays this week. It should have been 5, but we skipped a day because the time frames are little arduous. One student complained that we had done a week's worth of assignments on the first day.

The class is geared for "level 2s" and very WASL oriented. However, I think there are only 4 out of the 16 who are eligible to take the WASL in August. Another 6 will take it for the first time in April 2007 and are taking this course for credit retrieval. The remaining 6 don't need the WASL for graduation, but do need an English credit. So kids, here's a warning. If you fail an english class, you'll get a solid month of WASL test taking. Talk about motivation against apathy.

It also suddenly occurs to me that I'm teaching seniors. I started out wanting to teach middle school. Got a job teaching freshman and sophomores, and every year since then have slowly moved up. If anyone had told me this five years ago, I would have told them they were crazy and that I never wanted to teach older teen-agers! Now, I'm writing letters of recommendation for colleges!

I'm also wondering exactly how many WASL prompts the state can actually come up with? I'll admit I haven't read ever day's plan, but we've used 5 from the recent past. If you aren't familiar with the WASL prompts, they basically fit the pattern of "write a letter/essay to some school official about something you experienced (expository)/want to change (pesuasive)." In fact, the practice prompt I gave to sophomores this year was very close to the one on the actual WASL... just a coincidence, really, but given the pattern how far off can can the teacher be? Heck, even though students have the opportunity to select their own topic, they generally write about the same thing.

• What would age you want to be? most of the answers were either 18 or 21
• What rule would change? boys -> no hat rule; girls -> dress code/tank tops
• What did you learn outside of school? sports activity: swimming, biking, little league.

I loved the one they had for 7th graders the year I student taught... recommend a food to be served in the cafeterial. Not suprisingly, the students were a bit lost on that one. The cafeterial offers more choices that the food court at the mall. What don't they serve?

They did include an interesting twist in teaching kids how to choose a topic. Think outside of the norm... instead of a number for "age", use "prehistoric age" or "Victorian age" (which none of the students got initially, being unfamiliar with the alterante use of "age" or knowing any time frame besides the current one). It would have made for some interesting essays if only they knew anything about history or fantasy.

The reading class is humming along. I seriously don't know how they are doing it, but they're doing it... I don't know if their journal entries describing how this is helping are just a bunch of BS or not. Hopefully, next week will be a little more interesting.