Skip to main content

The start of a new "semester"

I hate to call what we are doing a semester since it is only a month long, but WOW the workload is a semester's worth.  This month I am taking an educational psychology course along with an elementary literacy course that focuses on assessments as well as teaching.  Both are very interesting so I can say at least while I'm being overwhelmed with a lot of work, it isn't boring work!  The biggest difference I'm seeing with this month's workload versus last month's work load is the amount of papers I have to write.  There are an ENORMOUS amount of papers. 

One of my paper's that I must write this first week focuses on Piaget;s theories of cognitive development.  I've found a little YouTube video that discusses what they are so you can get an idea of what I'm learning about at this stage in the program.


I missed the first psychology in class lecture due to my daughter having to go to the hospital, and now I am feeling like I'm flying blind on my work.  The syllabus tells me what the topic each paper has to be on, but it does not tell me when it is due, or the requirements of the paper.  I guess I'm looking for a rubric!  I need to know if I should be persuasive, informative, length of the paper, and even though I've already said it, the due date is just as important!  I'm going to try and email the professor again to see if I can get those questions answered.

My question for you today is when you are writing a paper or doing any assignment, what kind of information do you find helpful to have to complete your task?  I ask this because as a teacher I want to be sure that I don't leave any room for discussion on my assignments.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inspiration and a Smart Pen

I finally figured out how to work my little interactive white board tablet in my room.  I used it on Friday and my kids loved it.  I like it to, and it was really my inspiration behind getting my Echo smart pen.  When trying to figure out how to use my interactive white board tablet (we will call it IWBT) I thought well I'll just google it and go from there.  Turns out... it isn't made anymore.  Never the less, I was able to figure out what I was doing, and it is great for my classroom.   It operates a lot like a Think Pad.  At any rate, I've seen several blog post referring to smart pens and LiveScribe on several blogs I subscribe to and I thought I would check it out.  I found an Echo pen in Best Buy and fell in love.  I was on a spending splurge today and decided this was going to go one of two ways.  I either was going to get an iPad, or a Smart Pen.  Well... I got the Smart Pen. So I've been sitting at home and right now...

Spiral Review In All Its Glory (Decimal of the Day)

   The school district I am in has cumulative tests covering everything taught each six weeks.  The twist is, these tests are made by administrators and not teachers.  This really isn't a problem to me.  It is a learning tool for me and a teachable moment for my students on the importance of all material covered in class.       We as teachers can really get bogged down in the variables of a test like this.  By that I mean, oh the test question was worded funny or well they were only given one chance to show mastery on this, my students are _______ fill in the blanks, thoughts, and reasoning.  The one thing my school district did was have us put our scores up standard by standard right next to every other teacher in the district who had to teach the same thing we did.  My oh my did I fall short!  I say I fell short even though I had great reasoning as to why my scores looked the way they did... but upon further reflection ...

Obviously Every Day Isn't Going To Happen

I really had a great goal of posting everyday, but it just isn't going to work.  Right now I'm sitting at a Hilton hotel in San Antonio waiting on room service to deliver me some dinner.  I have to prepare for tomorrow's training with my current company and do homework for my degree!  I have driven approximately 7 hours today and class starts at 7am tomorrow... I'm tired thinking about it.  However.... This morning I woke up bright and early to do some homework.  This girl is NOT getting behind.  Today I worked on issues discussing internet safety and really why it is important.  I discovered that Texas is currently revising the technology TEKS which is a VERY important thing to know.  Internet safety is something I really have a heart for, and there are many reasons.  I have 5 at home with me right now, and the dangers of children not being safe hit a little too close to home this past year.  In the neighboring community a young t...