During the month of October, I have learned/noticed that some
of my students are beginning to lose focus; therefore, they are not attending
class and completing assignments as they were in the beginning of the semester. This has affected these students’ grades for
which I am attempting to reach in order to get them back on track to pass the
semester. Unfortunately, if they are not
attending class or submitting assignments, they are unable to take advantage of
the time allowed in class to complete/begin assignments. I have also learned that it is difficult to
allow time for a lot of assignments while still allowing instructional time to
cover particular material. It is difficult
to allow time to complete lengthier assessments, as I am aware that some of the
students are not taking advantage of this time and using it wisely. I do not want those students sitting there
doing nothing with this valuable class time.
The discoveries that I uncovered during the month of October
is that I did not allow as much class time to complete assignments. However, the unit in October was set up
differently. During the first month of
school, we focused on fictional short stories for which a comprehension quiz
was assigned after each story. During
October, we read and analyzed nonfiction for which we take one test at the end
of the unit. The midterm was situated in
the middle of my unit, so I created a midterm using our nonfiction introductory
material. Unfortunately, I did not allow
time for this in class due to the length of the midterm. However, I did allow some class time for
students to complete/begin nonfiction activities that accompanied this
unit.
Again, the challenges I faced this month was time. I wanted to allow more in-class time for
students to complete assignments; however, this became difficult with the
material we were covering. Also, along
with the challenge of time, my unit was set up differently, but I did allow
time to complete activities instead of quizzes since this unit concludes with a
unit test. I will allow the students’ class
time to complete this Nonfiction Unit Test, so that I can continue to analyze if
this time is beneficial to the students.
I believe I will address my time issue by reflecting on the
amount of material I want to cover versus the amount of time I want to allow my
students to complete in-class assignments.
I will also continue to plan the rest of the semester in order to gauge
how much time I have left and what material I would like to cover with the
semester remaining. This will allow me
to plan my class time accordingly so that my students will be able to take
advantage of in-class time for assignments while still allowing enough
instructional time to cover the most important aspects of the course.
