Day Three at Warren C

Day Three great as expected, as the majority of the day took place in the wonderful Warren Central Media Plex. All classes were required to do web quests in which the students looked up generic facts on the 3 major monotheistic religions. While doing this they filled out graphic organizers that I felt were set up as a great scaffolding tool.

Throughout the day the kids asked for our help and we helped guide them to valuable websites that had the information they needed to be successful on the assignment. I felt that the question the students had the most difficult with was naming holidays associated with Judaism and Islam. Non the less, it was great to interact with the students and help them be successful on their projects.

Also, we got our first experience with grading papers for our teacher. At first I had mixed opinions on our teachers way of grading homework, as it was solely completion based. Multiple times I saw completely incorrect responses to simple questions, but yet I still had to write a little red check mark next to the question and count it as right. At first this bothered me, but eventually I began to evaluate this effort more closely. Each and every day students are assigned work sheets, and with five classes of 25-35 students that creates a workload that is extremely heavy. Therefore to eliminate the chance of dying from grading overload, the teacher grades more for effort. Previous classes our teacher had administered exams and she illustrated to us how she takes an extremely closer look on important/big assignments that cover the most important aspects of history, while these homework assignments focus more on smaller details. This made a lot more sense and assured me that Mrs. Kines grading ideas and class set up works very well.

The only problem I feel that could emerge is if students began to learn that these assignments are based on completion, multiple times I graded incomplete assignments that we had to mark as incorrect. If students began to learn this method they could easily put letters, random dates/names or even draw a picture to receive credit. This would obviously benefit no one, and it is our job as future educators to make sure students get the most out of their assignments even if it is "busy work".

"You stay classy, Indiana University"

Mr. Stanger