Back to school!

Today students had a good deal of work to do for Moodle Monday. Here's the run-down:

• Food for Thought Thinking quiz (Google form)
• Listen to Research Podcast #3 & 4
• Survey Monkey: Rate your teacher

I also handed back students' marked-up drafts in hours 2 and 3--the grade in Power School is for the amount of revising the student did on their draft. Many did little. Students had a class hour to mark for revision, an hour to begin making changes and revisions, and two homework nights to finish.

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The survey was interesting for me. Overall, students seems to understand the purpose of using Moodle and our new emphasis on PBL assessments--but aren't all together comfortable with the change. This makes sense, considering this is our first year using the Core Curriculum Standards. A few students seem to feel that using Moodle implies teachers are "lazy", when it fact is merely a place to quiz, read, and respond--something we do in ELA classes with or without Moodle. It's just a different delivery system. I also feel as though Moodle should free me up to respond to specific students' questions and concerns, but too often students aren't even on task, so I have nothing to help with. That is frustrating for me as a teacher.

Some students also expressed discontent with the more "open-ended" Project Based Learning assessments--but that is the very purpose of the projects: to allow students freedom to creatively express their learning and synthesize their reading, (usually) using technology. One student commented, "To be honest, it feels like I haven't learned anything new in this class, just opening my mind to new perspectives" ... and that new perspective is exactly what the writers of the Common Core had in mind.

The survey was clear that I need to work on better directions--I write bulleted lists for Moodle Monday, but will  be more explicit in the classroom and ask kids to take out their planners to copy what's written on the board. I'll go over the survey with students tomorrow and create another survey for the end of the year.(Some students commented on a specific grade and I will encourage them to see me for explanation.)

On the positive side, the Writer's Notebooks--a best practice--got the thumbs up. Students also replied that I was fair, consistent, knew my subject, and was well-prepared for class.