Home Sick and Grading...

Kitties love to help with grading...

So I haven't had much time to update this blog with all the amazing things my students have been doing.  This is mostly because I collected over 200 short essays in less than 3 weeks and I have done NOTHING but write lesson plans and grade papers for the better part of the last 14 days.  I graded before school.  I graded through lunch and after school and after dinner.  I graded all weekend!  Thank heavens I don't have children of my own or they would be horribly neglected.  (I frankly do not comprehend how my colleagues with multiple toddlers at home survive with such grace.)

In short, I am struggling with the demands of the new Common Core lessons.  First of all, I have to write them from scratch because no text books or curriculum generators have finished producing usable materials.  This often means adjusting curriculum from the AP world history courses or finding primary and secondary sources that work for the content I am still required to cover.  This takes between 3 and 6 hours per lesson.  Each lesson covers about an hour of class time.

Second, these lessons don't produce student work that can be graded in a quick scan.  There are few multiple choice questions here, few single answer questions as well.  If we want to teach students how to think, we have to allow them to consider multiple perspectives and that means nearly every assignment I grade has multiple possible answers.  These invariably come in the form of short essays (1 page, 1 paragraph), that need to be assessed on multiple levels:  clarity of argument, accuracy of argument and the quality of the evidence chosen to support the argument.  Sometimes I consider writing conventions as well to support my English Teacher Friends in their good work.  Its a lot to consider.

Now, let's do some math... If I have 145 students, which I do, and 85% turn in their assignments, I get 123 papers to grade.  If each one takes 5 minutes (meaning, I write no comments, and only fill out a basic rubric score), it will take me 10 hours to score that assignment.  If I take the time to write comments and helpful suggestions to really improve student thinking and writing, it takes almost twice that.  And this is for a single assignment.  In order for students to really master complex critical thinking skills, they need to do multiple assignments and get feedback on several of them (some are practice).  In our school, we also allow all students to make revisions to any of their critical thinking or writing assignments, so I often score at least 20% of these short answer assignments twice and sometimes three times as students work toward mastery.

These lessons are amazing.  They have a demonstrable positive effect on student skills increases.  Students become very competent, above grade level, in making clear, well supported academic arguments, and that will make them successful in life, no matter what they go on to do.  This is the work that inspires me.

But it is also killing me slowly.  Too many 14 hour days and no weekends in a row, and you can wear a body out.  Too many sleepless nights obsessing about how much work you still have unfinished and the body becomes a home for microbes and viruses.  If I didn't care quite so much, I would probably be a healthier, more balanced person, but work-life balance is not valued in education, and there is enormous pressure on both students and teachers to fill every moment of every day with academics to ensure the success of the next generation.

So, I am home sick today... and its a pretty bad tummy flu to make me go home in the middle of the day.  But, of course, instead of resting, drinking lots of fluids and binge watching Veronica Mars, I am grading papers... and then I will score projects... and then I will work on an anthropology assignment on innovations of Song China.

So if you don't see my post on some actual solutions to these issues any time soon, its because I am still trying to find out how many of my students understand why Japan built an empire in the Pacific before WWII.  Wish me luck and good health!

Learning Vocabulary

I introduced my students to Kate Kinsella's Vocabulary Word Maps this week.  This is a technique to help students master the nuances of academic language.  We use it in our World Studies curriculum to teach the language of the discipline, namely those words that are necessary to understand world history.

The technique works because students process the word on multiple levels.  They look at the formal definition, they consider various versions of the word so they can recognize it in its other forms and they make connections to examples and related concepts.  This makes them consider the word in a variety of different ways.  Each new way of looking at the word creates a new pathway in the brain between that word and its meaning.  Finally, they write their own definition and draw an image or symbol for the word.  The act of creating (both verbally and visually) makes the connection even stronger because their brains are using their understanding of the word to complete the task instead of simply recalling its meaning.  Whenever students use activities higher up in Bloom's Taxonomy, they tend to learn more, have better facility with the concepts and remember them longer.

Here is a link to a Blank Vocab Word Map if you want one.

And here are some Student Examples:

I am very fond of this one because my student managed to include a reference to Korea (with his portrait of Kim Jong-Un).  I am a huge fan of Korea!  좋다!

This example demonstrates one of the reasons English vocabulary is so hard to learn.

The word on the bottom is Occupation.  A student who is learning English comes in to class and the teacher says they are going to be studying Occupation today.  

That student is Thrilled!

They think, "I totally know this!  My dad told me.  Your occupation is your job.  We must be talking about jobs in history today.  Awesome.  I totally got this!"

And then the teacher starts talking about armies and Iraq and the student is completely confounded.  

They think, "I am so confused.  Does occupation only mean jobs in the military?  Why is there a picture of a tank?  What the heck is this lesson about?!"

The next thing you know the student has shut down.  They are reeling from the whip lash of thinking they had it and realizing they didn't without knowing why.  They may experience vocabulary fake outs like this daily while they try to master the nuances of English and its many appropriated words.  The frustration must be incredible.

Anyway, Vocab Word Maps can help with that.  They give students a chance to consider just the meaning that applies directly to the lesson at hand or the subject, and to focus on the parts they really need for understanding.