September Reflection

During the month of September, I learned that so many other "wonderings" can stem from the initial "wondering!" My initial wondering is "Will having students in the General English 2 class complete assignments in class increase grades, participation, and attendance?"  It is amazing how you really start looking down different avenues as you research just one aspect of your class.  I also learned that you have to accommodate for various circumstances, such as absences, tardiness, early outs, access issues, and new enrollments.

So far, I have allowed my students to complete six quizzes in class.  The first one was only available in class.  I decided it would be beneficial to leave the others open until the original due dates of the following Sunday by midnight.  This helped a lot with the various circumstances mentioned above.  Even if students had completed these quizzes prior to class, it freed up time for them to complete other assignments.  Although I still enter zeroes into my gradebook, the number of zeroes entered have decreased for the quizzes that the students had time to complete in class.  There was one quiz in particular for which I allowed class time to complete that resulted in a few more zeroes that the others, but I am thinking it is because it was a difficult story or maybe I should have allotted more class time; I am hoping it is not that I am just losing some of my students at this point in time.  During these class times, it is nice to see the activity going on through the Blackboard gradebook.  Also, the students participation and attendance have been great! 

One of the challenges that I face is time.  It seems as though with the other lessons/activities/discussions/questions that I want to cover in class, I am cutting their in-class quiz time a little shorter than I want.  Also, I still have students who do not take advantage of this time.  To overcome these challenges, I still remind the students of their assignments every day in class, as well as send reminder emails every Friday about assignments that are due by midnight Sunday.

I believe to address the time issue stated above, I will use better time management so that I can allow more time for certain in-class assignments/quizzes.  I will have to determine which deserves more time/concentration/attention and achieve a good balance of each and plan accordingly.  :)