For many years, students in my class have worked towards writing and reading goals each quarter. In the past, the process worked like this: I set specific categories within which students would have goals. Students came up with ideas for goals in those categories. I reviewed their ideas and suggested revisions as needed. We met… Read More A More Collaborative Approach to Goal Setting
After creating physical portfolios in three-ring binders last year, I knew that I wanted to switch to digital ones this year. Over the summer I got suggestions through Twitter and ended up with a huge list of options. In August, I investigated as many of those suggestions as I could to try and find the… Read More Creating Digital Portfolios
This is the first in a series of posts about our end-of-quarter assessment conferences. Some of the things mentioned here will be developed more in other posts, and I’ll link to those once they’re posted. Last year, as we began deciding students’ in end-of-quarter assessment conferences, I learned a ton. I still remember starting them… Read More This Year’s Approach to Assessment Conferences
At the start of the school year, I wrote about some of the letters I send home to parents throughout the early part of the school year. While the specific letters have changed a bit at times, this has been my standard method of introducing my class and myself to parents and caregivers. I would… Read More Parent Videos
This past week was rough. Due to a number of factors, some within my control and some outside of it, we did not have as much time to read and write in class on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday as what we normally do. I hate weeks like that, and, while I’m not quite sure how… Read More The Reading Zone
This year as I started working with a new group of writers, I made some changes to the first few weeks of school. This led to changes in my early writing conferences too. One of my goals for the year is to more consistently and enthusiastically point out the good things I see in students’… Read More A Question for Writing Conferences
If you weren’t at my NerdCamp session and would like more of an introduction to roundtable discussions before reading this, you can find it here. We have just moved past the halfway point of our first quarter, and we’ve completed four of the five roundtable topics in our first group. My first set, which we… Read More 1st Quarter Reading Roundtable Discussions
Last year, when deciding to eliminate traditional grading from my classes as much as I was allowed to, one of my big decisions was how to use our online gradebook, which I was required to keep updated throughout each quarter. I believe it was Joy Kirr who made the suggestion to use the comment/note feature… Read More How I’m Using Our Online Gradebook Even Though I’m not Grading
Week Three: We read one more that focused on revision, followed by three titles that related to things students had named the first week when creating a list in response to this question after reading We Don’t Eat Our Classmates: What do we need from each other this year in order to have the best… Read More Weeks 3-4 of Classroom Book-a-Day
I always spend a ton of time planning the first few weeks. It seems like there is way too much I want to do, and I go over my plans again and again, trying to fit everything in without overscheduling. Between introductory activities, establishing the routines of our workshop, writing lessons on process and craft,… Read More A Reflection on the First Three Weeks
