Week 13 Reflection (November 15-19)

So, this week was the big week. My U.S. honor classes’ projects were due. Overall, I must say the process went better than expected, besides pushing the due date back. The students were not afraid to ask questions when they needed them answered. Also, they utilized the e-mail created for the assignment.

The projects, for the most part, were awesome. Although they had full freedom to choose their own project type, most of them used a PowerPoint/presentation or a video. Some of the projects were very serious and others were very funny. However, all of them were informative. After seeing the final products, it shows that my students really did have some fun with this and that they actually learned something. I was very impressed with the effort put forth by some of these kids. I am definitely using project based learning in the future.

Besides seeing some awesome projects, I saw something else that was amazing. The grades were made up by 100 points from me using a rubric and 100 points from the peers using a rubric; the peer grade was made up by an average of all of the grades given by their peers. Since I gave the students the power to grade their peers, I thought everyone would get 100s in the peer grading. Man, was I wrong! The kids were actually pretty tough with their grading. I must say, in some cases, they were harder with grading than I was. I was really shocked. Even with the tough peer grading, there was no grade below an eighty-seven percent.

Contracts were due this week. After having a few meetings with the interns and our coordinator the hours came together pretty well. My theme is special education. I did not really have a lot of experience with low achieving students so I thought I would gain my experience from the contract hours. Some of the things that I am going to do are co-teach in a social studies, inclusion class, observe a special education teacher, and tutor low achieving students. I feel pretty good about these hours, and I hope everything turns out the way I want it to; however, we all know how that goes.

Lastly, my action research is done! On Friday my students in my world classes took their last test using notes. On the other hand, I was not there to see the data. I had to go home to get my new glasses and will not see the data until Monday. After talking to some of the students, there were mixed feelings about the notes. Some students liked them and thought they were beneficial and other hated them. According to the previous data, they have increased achievement, except for the exam after homecoming. Once I have the last bit of data, I will update on the AR section.