YPT, Rewrites, Community Circle and High School

This coming Tuesday is the informative presentation at Bloor CI on making the transition from Grade 8 to Grade 9.  Unfortunately, due to a previous engagement, I will not be there.

Yesterday we had our short field trip to Young People's Theatre to see To Kill a Mockingbird.   I am already seeing a future Community Circle around some of the matters brought up in the play.  Before we left for home, I caught a shot of the group in the lobby of YPT.

The article we read last week on homework was a point of discussion in class on Wednesday. 

 Unfortunately, not all of the students participated.  This discussion is an attempt to develop speaking and listening skills that are important in life and part of the Oral Communication strand in the Language curriculum.  Not only that, but I would like to see the students develop their skills and confidence while talking.

The open-book Math test took place on Wednesday.  We had only 4 students achieve marks of 70% and higher.  Here they are:

Now, for students who scored C- and lower have the option of doing a Rewrite.  It is something I have been doing in Math for a long time.  It is an attempt to develop a deeper understanding of the mistakes they made on the test.  Basically, the students have to figure out what they did wrong and then make the corrections to the question.  If they do this, they are able to earn back half the value of the mark.  So, if a question is worth 2, and they do a Rewrite, they can earn 1 mark back.  On this test, it is out of 25.  Earning back 1 mark equals to a 4% increase in the result on the test!

Here is a model of how it may work (done by me) and an example from a former student I had.

Homework

Very excited about homework!

Enjoy the weekend.