March
17
ELA B10: Mar 16 Writing the essay…
- Students had several classes last week to research a topic of their choice. They were asked to gather support of their upcoming essay and fill in an essay outline on Friday. The deal was that they would come to school Monday with a completed essay and be allowed to type / write their essay on the computer, instead of doing it by hand. I was away Friday and apparently very few people did much – Regionals seems to have consumed their Entire Weekend (sigh…..) – so there were a lot of unprepared people in class on Monday.
- I also thought I’d made it clear that they would be writing the essay in class and in class only – that it was an in-class essay. Explaining this again today seemed to shock them all, so to offer a compromise I’ve given them an extra day to write that essay. Basically, today they did in class what they were asked to have done last Friday.
- We talked a little bit about their use of class time. If they want compromises or the benefit of the doubt, at times, they have to show more initiative and take responsibility for their own learning. Even today, when they were behind the gun and given the gift of an extra day along with some understanding on my part, they still talked and seemed to fail to appreciate this extra work class. We’ll have to see how things continue in the future. I’m thinking “seating plannnnn” (sung outloud).