I will be honest- I am not a fan of January- it includes many of the things that have frustrated me over the years- football teams losing, the baseball off-season (hot stove league), final exams and reflection.
I've had a great conversation with my school's on-line PLC regarding the use of Final exams. There have been many great blog entries my the educational pundits/experts/talking heads out there that tend to get me thinking. Just a few for those who care: http://www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/2013/10/final-exams-in-high-school-unnecessary/, http://www.thenerdyteacher.com/2012/01/final-exams-have-it-all-wrong-edchat.html, http://www.patrickmlarkin.com/2014/01/pondering-mid-term-and-final-exams.html . OK, so I read the "Nerdy Teacher" one last year- whatever.
I am seriously contemplating how I want to do my assessment in the future- I can see an exam in Math/Science classes- but what about History? I feel that my exams end up being a god-awful list of names and events- I am getting too much towards that "Dead-White Guy - memorize a bunch of crap" history that I told myself I wanted to avoid! But, it ends up that way! I think about my exam last year to finish off the year- 150 multiple choice questions- YUCK go figure..kids did terrible on it. In History we need to find a gray area in History- some of the important background information and the story- but also how to think, analyze, and tell that story. It is truly frustrating to me and honestly makes me wonder if I am meeting my students needs in those departments- honestly- it makes me wonder if I am a good teacher at all and if I should be doing this job at all! Anyway- January rant over. Plan for the future!!!
How is flipping? Flipping is flipping awesome- a majority of my students seem to like the idea and some are even reading more outside of class to do the flipping notes- I would love to find some more flipping materials- maybe some other articles or something to add in...but for now I will use my recorded lectures and textbooks...It is a start! This way I have some good "thinking" type activities planned going forward. I would love to start blogging in my classes- but without a constant access to computer technology I think I will be waiting on this process- it could just be biting more off than I can chew- I have no idea. I just need to find a way to get my students to: Think, analyze, and write about history- and in the process learn and think more about the world around them.
New toys I plan on trying out this spring: One isn't really a toy, but it is Stanford's "Reading Like A Historian" They have some killer primary source activities for both US and World History. A lot more for US than World- but still good. I also want to play with "Thinklink" interactive images. I a hoping that I will be able to use a visual primary source or sources and have students do some research to annotate them for an assignment or activity.
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