teaching academic skills / my extra credit

[ginlindzey]

I've been grading tests for the last 24 hours and I'm now recording them/posting them to my gradebook.  I can observe on main thing among those with low grades: they are not "showing their work."

I bribe my students with extra credit.  I do.  I admit it.  I teach them via warm-ups and other things HOW to slow down and see the details and get the RIGHT answers.  For instance, for reading comprehension questions, I teach them to look for context clues in the question to be sure they are finding the right answer in the story.  I encourage them to mark off WHERE they are in the site passage on the test, and to do their "thinking" right there on the page.

On sentence completion sections, such as (on the Latin 1 test) deciding whether you need a nominative or an accusative to complete the sentence, I encourage students to be sure to identify what they already have and to think about sentence patterns.  On subject/verb agreement, I encourage students to circle verb endings and think about what is needed as a subject or vice versa.

Any mnemonic device that they use I *want* to see in the margins.  I want to see them using it. 

Every now and then when a student does badly AND has notes, I can see where they went wrong.  For instance, one girl just made a chart up wrong and because of that kept choosing the wrong answer.  I'm going to encourage her to retake that particular portion of the test.  But almost everyone else who did poorly did NOT show their work so I canNOT see where they went wrong.

In all likelihood they had no test-taking strategy but were randomly choosing answers.

I see bright kids who *can* do well who don't seem to realize it because they won't help themselves.   So right now as I'm recording these grades I'm trying to think of HOW to get some of these strugglers to do what I'm teaching them to do.

It's not about the extra points, though that helps a bit (usually 3-6 points or so for those who do it).  I really and truly think that their grades are raised a letter grade by just the act of showing their thinking.

Sometimes people as whether my grades are inflated.  Some.  Sure, I'll be honest about that.  They are inflated a bit on the top end.  On the other hand, I have students scraping by HONESTLY and actually learning enough to get through a second year--and maybe even a 3rd.  I'm not passing students with stupid fluff for extra credit--I'm trying to teach skills with my extra credit.  I'm trying to get MORE students to HIGHER levels of Latin by teaching them the skills that come naturally to other students.

After all, AP wants us to have more diverse students in our classes--but how can we get them there if we don't teach them the skills they need early on? 

The one thing I'm sure of--I never want MY Latin courses to be a weed-out course.

back to my grading

Comments

[ginlindzey.livejournal.com]

I read this note to my Latin 1's and 2's today after I had given back the tests. A few kids *did* come in to retake parts of the tests; I'm about to go see how they did.

I don't know what they thought.... You don't want to come of as a whining teacher, begging kids to be good. I do know this: one total slacker in Latin 1, a kid who you can tell is seriously thinking about dropping out, came in for lunch tutorials.

I asked him if he wanted to retake any part of the test (which he failed miserably and utterly). No. I told him that we needed to make a deal about having a totally different 2nd nine weeks.

Then I sat down with test and went through part of it with him. I showed him what sorts of things he could have scribbled in the margins; what sort of notes to scribble over certain words; how to be logical about choices and reason out what the right answer was.

I saw a lightbulb or two go off over his little head. Then I looked at him and told him what I could tell about him: he'd rather just not do something than to do it and look dumb (yup, he agreed); he'd been contemplating dropping out (yup). I looked at him and said it would be great for a while--he'd have cash, he could buy things. But then there'd be that glass ceiling where he couldn't get a better job and get nicer things.

I encouraged him instead to reconsider. I said if he thought there really wasn't a point to learning Latin, that he was wrong. I showed him how it could help with spelling and vocabulary, and discussed how it would help his understanding of English grammar. I talked about the transferrable skills it would develop (I didn't think my loftier philosophical goals would do the trick here). I talked about how he could develop the skills needed to graduate and maybe take some college courses and instead of having a crummy job because he was a high-school drop-out, that he could own and run a company that hired high-school drop-outs.

If nothing else, he looked a little shocked that I understood his situation.

It's a long shot. Maybe it will pay off, maybe not. He's my biggest, fattest F right now, and I haven't had time to talk to his parents like I should.

You know what? He's the sort of kid College Board wants to see in the AP classes.... the trick is getting them in there.

[(Anonymous)]

i make my kids, not ALL of the time, but some of the time, schematize their latin. we call it 'squiggling.'
the rules are:
underline subject
double underline object
circle verb
parentheses around prep phrases or ablatives
wavy underline genitives
dotted underline datives
dotted circle infinitives
bracket off subordinate clauses
etc.
i leave the rules up at the front of the class.
whenever we go over latin i always squiggle to give them the visual.
sometimes i have them come up to the board and squiggle only.
then i have another set come up and translate, keeping the squiggles in mind.
or i have them squiggle, then have them summarize the content.
but it's a nice way to make them slow down, think about endings, prove to me that they are identifying cases and parts of speech, etc.
it's just a tool.
something to think about.