On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 11:44 AM, Ryan wrote:
I find this video very interesting.I thought I would share it with you and see if you have done this before.If I make the time, I would like to do this for my communication with parents.
Very interesting indeed. Think about the workshop standards based grading method that we talked about earlier. Instead of a blank to type in your comments you could have the eight teaching points from the unit in your form, check box style. During the day as you conference you walk with your iPad around and have the form up. Click the kids name. Check any mastery boxes that you notice as you confer with the student. At the end of the day you have a record of which kids you conferred with and what demonstration you have seen from each one. You have typed almost nothing, communicated clearly with students and parents what they have demonstrated. You could also have a section next step suggestions, including some videos for reviewing teaching points for kids who have not mastered anything and some advanced teaching points for kids to go deeper on. I like this so much I invented a sample letter.
Student*,
Today you demonstrated good use of commas. You demonstrated correct use of quotations to support an argument. Thank you for the work you did to learn and practice these skills.
While not required, an idea for honing your craft of writing is using more vivid verbs. Your current project could really benefit from this.
You have not demonstrated proper capitalization yet, even though this is an expectation of the unit. Here is a link to a video** demonstrating what was taught and is expected.
Sincerely,
Mr. Teacher
*At the high school level I would be sure to include kids in the communication. In fact I would write the email to the kid and CC the parents, rather than writing right to the parents. This continually reinforces that the responsibility is with the student.
**Any video links I would send with a bit.ly or goo.gl short link so that you could gather stats on whether parents were clicking them.
Thanks for passing this along.
--jim
