My students and I have jumped into the new school year full force. I have provided my students with much wider variety of assignments and assessments than in previous years, and they seem to be responding well so far. This is the first time since I started teaching that I did not know the bulk of my students. Since I have been teaching Spanish III for three years, this means I did not have any of them in class last year or year before last. Although it is October, I still feel like I am getting to know them and they are getting to know me. I feel like I had to be very diligent about getting feedback to them very quickly so that they would understand my expectations, so I have been doing a lot of short assessments and tons of grading.
I have been including more cooperative learning into my lessons. Jon Orech was kind enough to suggest some readings on cooperative learning, and I am using some of the methods and techniques in Spencer Kagan’s Cooperative Learning to get started. Although I have always done a lot of partner and small group work, how to assess group work has always been tricky for me, so I hope to work on that this year. Hopefully I will have the time to document what is working and not working on my blog.
Another goal for this school year is to get to a point where kids can self select some of their assignments. I have been brainstorming with other teachers in my department effective methods of having our students work with vocabulary outside of the classroom. If this is the only homework my students do, I will be thrilled. The problem is that many don’t do it. So I am trying to figure out a way (other than quizzing them to death) to hold them accountable for learning their vocabulary in a manner that is meaningful to them.
Please feel free to share any tips on either subject. As always your comments are helpful and appreciated!
