January 30, 2013

  • What If?

    I like to play the "What If" Game a lot... in a positive way, that is, in regards to my classes.

    This week, I'm thinking:
    ---What if I didn't assign & grade these small assignments so much & we focused just on bigger projects (kind of like how some classes only focus on tests?)? It would be less maintenance on my part, less paper work, perhaps. I think I'd keep my daily prompts, in this hypothetical, and we'd build off of them or something. Or maybe I shouldn't feel the pressure to grade EVERYTHING and just give effort points more often, especially on 10 point things. I really like focusing in on their prompts; I kind of like going through them to circle errors & see what they generally wrote about the prompt that day. Since it's fun for me, I should keep that around, right? Right.
    ---What if I told more stories to link to what we're learning? I have a few that demonstrate why language is important, etc. It occurred to me the other day, when thinking about Dr. Cummings and how she taught Educational Psychology, that I like telling them stories that relate in some way to what we are doing.
    ---What if we covered more errors visually in class, like with the Prezi of Errors?
    ---What if...