Weekly Blog #1: Beginnings

Weekly Blog #1

“Your boy’s a limey fork flinger, Mother. What will the bridge club say?” – The Blue Raja

The Highlight Reel

            The highlight of my week was seeing students apply the knowledge they have after reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus to a scenario in which certain characters were misrepresented. Not only have students had to complete their culminating senior project and present their findings in the last week, but they have also had to take a cumulative final unit test on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. As a reward for many weeks of hard and intensive work, the last few minutes of class each day this week has been used to show a movie version of Frankenstein. Instead of simply watching the movie and falling asleep, the diligent students have initiated a discussion about the errors in the movie before turning it on each day. Their focuses usually include not only discussing what was portrayed differently in the movie, but also whether or not it served the purpose of hooking the watcher because of a more dramatic version of events. Their willingness to continue the learning and analysis on their own is a very impressive testament to the mind of the student.

Thinking Differently

            Appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes it seems as though students are ignoring the lesson or zoning out or even sleeping with their eyes open. This week, however, I was very surprised to see some of the students that it would be easy to write off as ignoring the lesson bring up some very valuable points about the discussion for the day. These thoughts ranged anywhere from taking an economic standpoint that I hadn’t considered to assessing the more inconspicuous of people or groups involved in events in a subtle way. It just goes to show that you truly can’t judge a book by its cover.

Approaches for Repertoire

            One approach that I hope to adopt in my classroom is the use of very short quizzes to check for understanding on assigned readings or homework. Incorporating quizzes encourages students to actually complete the assignment while not overly punishing them for not completing it. By making sure that they aren’t worthy enough to truly affect a grade (except cumulatively over time) you provide an incentive for students to complete quizzes. As my uncle always says “Incentives change behavior” (it is actually his first of three rules.).

Perplexing Situations Encountered

            This week flew by! It was a pretty easy week though. For the most part, students found it in them to put their heads down and work after a small prompting. Classroom management issues were pretty much non-existent, which was surprising considering that prom was only days away all week (and all the hoopla that goes with it).