March Post

As Spring quickly crept up on us, the kids have become a little restless. It may be the warmer weather, it may be that CSAP is over or it could just be that they can see the end of the school year approaching.

Whatever it is, I know that I have two options as a teacher. I can give them problems to complete and fight with them every step of the way until they finish or I can provide more interesting, hands-on, technology based lessons that they are interested in doing. Now, I feel like the second option works better no matter what time of year it is, but especially now when the students have the end of the year in sight. However, with that being said I think sometimes it is necessary to have students solve problems in order to practice a certain skill. Anyways, my point is that I am planning on using as many projects as I can to close out the year to not only help the students stay interested but also to help me as a teacher.

On a different topic. I have just administered my first unit tests online using Galileo. As with any new technological adventure there were some hurdles that we had to overcome (it was amazing how many students didn't know there student ID numbers or how to write their birthdays numerically), but overall I was happy with how it went. A few benefits that I have found from giving an online test were that it mixed up the questions to prevent cheating; it grades the test for me which saves a lot of time; and the best part is that it can group students according to standards which allows me to work with small skills groups based on their test results. I look forward to using Galileo more often in the future to help me assess my students.