Week of 9/21 Readings

Two things stuck out to me during these readings:

1. Students must fully understand how to produce what you are asking them to. It will take more time initially to explain product formats and what expectations are required, but it will make the process SO much smoother. I think the idea is that during the process of a project, the students should be asking questions about content and concepts, not about formatting details. How can you expect someone to express themselves in a certain way when you have not clarified how that form of expression looks? I think it's SUPER important to make sure that what you are asking the students to do is clear to them, because you could end up indirectly forcing them to receive a poor grade when really they just didn't understand how to go about expressing what they knew.

2. I thought the idea of giving two grades to each student was phenomenal. I feel that this would be SO much more helpful when hosting a conference with a parent, because you would be able to provide deeper comments than just "Johnny made a 55 on this, a 79 on that, yatta yatta." I think this would also be a great tool for the teacher's self-evaluation. For instance, when you see that Michael has made a letter grade of A but an improvement grade of C, you can as yourself, "Is it because of a lack of effort on his part, or am I not providing enough stimulating material that will challenge this advanced learner?"

Those are my thoughts. :)