Tick tock, tick tock

Days are counting down and time is getting shorter each day. We just ended 5 days of work on the last project of the year! Most kids are working well and using their time wisely--they're really getting a lot done. But some students are using the time to play on their phones. All hour. I'm not prone to taking phones, but I began today. If a student was not working on their project and was playing instead, I asked them to take their phones to Mr.Sharphorn and wrote a detention. Interestingly, students who play on their phones are usually the students who are also failing.

Simon Shek@Flickr.com

This week I also conferenced with over 30 students about their research paper and/or Works Cited page. I encouraged any student who scored lower than 80% to fix their work. These are skills needed to be college ready, and they'll only have one or two more opportunities to practice research skills before they're in college. I reviewed using an online style guide and gave kids a "tour" of where resources are posted on Moodle. Those rewrites are due next Friday, May, 31. As always with re-writes, I enter the new grade, not an average.