Sticky-note discussions. Learning outcomes Sticky-Note discussions are powerful tools that: help students organize and better understand different reading selections. provide an outlet that allows the student to stop, think, and respond to the written text. provide guidelines and goals for comprehending each text. decrease the chances of boredom by targeting specific skills. It is easy to target those students with comprehension difficulties while also allowing them to validate their responses along with the others. Teacher planning Time required for lesson 12 months Materials/resources Selected reading passage Small sized Post-it notes (color and shape may vary.
Pre-activities Depending on the reading selection, a set of guidelines or rules will need to be established for students to follow. Activities As a student or group reads or completes a selection, have them stop and periodically place sticky-notes to highlight items they want to discuss following given guidelines. Assessment Supplemental information Comments. Grading for Mastery and Redesigning My Gradebook.
For the last two years, I’ve been increasingly frustrated with the traditional approach to assessing students and reporting grades. I want my students to value learning, not the accumulation of points. Unfortunately, I feel like school is akin to a Pacman game where students are myopically focused on gobbling up points and, as a result, miss the point of learning entirely. Redesigning My Gradebook This year I decided to overhaul my gradebook and assess students based on their mastery of particular skills, also referred to as standards-based grading. Instead of organizing my gradebook using traditional categories (e.g. homework, classwork, projects, tests, and projects), I identified the main skills we would be focusing on developing in this class and used those to create my gradebook categories.
Last Year This Year Don’t Grade Everything In the past, students received points for almost every activity they completed in class. Entering Grades in Relation to Specific Skills.