When I was in middle school I have the best history teacher. I can remember so much from that teacher because he was good, and made learning fun. One specific writing assignment we had to do was on a certain person in history. The teacher picked who he wanted us to write about, but what made this stand out to me was the fact that we almost had to be the person we were writing about. We had a paper to write with sources and all in able to get to know the person, but then we presented to the class about who we wrote about. Along with the assignment we had to draw a picture, had to be somewhat historically accurate, and then had that as who we were talking about. The assignment was good because we really got to know who the person was, and there impact in history.
On the flip side of things, my high school English teacher gave us two big research papers that were due before Christmas break and the end of school. We had nothing to follow when writing, and the topic was just something in history. It seemed like busy work to me, which it was. There was no specified guideline except for the format style and page length. So, I took the easy route and wrote about men like JFK. I always did good, but there was just nothing ever to follow. I like when you have to find something they did in history and their impact on people and society. The one thing that stood out to me was what my friend would write on. I remember he wrote about Pete Rose and another paper on The Beatles. He got docked on points because it wasn't historical. We all got fired up about that because both of his papers had historical significance because Pete Rose changed baseball and The Beatles change music throughout the world. He never had a rubric or anything to grade on so that was lame. I hated busy work most of the time because I never learned as well, so that was a bad writing experience for me and one of my friends.
Both these experiences apply to what I have recently learned through the PowerPoint and reading. Looking at my second example, the teacher didn't have a rubric or anything to follow except the number of pages and it had to be historical. I never received any kind of feedback or a good job or nothing. I received my paper and the grade. Another thing was he didn't give any examples. It was take it for what it's worth kind of paper. It had no clear writing prompts or anything. It didn't seem like we were working for an end goal. These will be things that I will change. I will have a rubric and a prompt in mind and allow students to have questions to answer and strive to see the impact of certain historical individuals. I will definitely leave feedback. I love how PowerPoint stated that we should put out specific strong points throughout the paper to highlight to let the student know how well that was done. In my good experience, I had a purpose for writing and that was to see the significance that person played in history, I found out what they looked like and had to draw them, and then I had to present. It help me learn in several different ways, and I felt like it help all students in their different ways of learning. This is something I will pattern my teaching and writing assignments after. We get the writing done, and they get to do artwork, and students can present in some sort of way. I thought it was a good way, and I can tell you exactly who Nicolas Copernicus was and his impact on society. I understand the good and the bad points of writing assignments, and I will definitely mixed things up a bit when I assign writings.
It is so cool that you had a teacher made learning about history something that you loved. I think that a majority of teacher became teachers because of a teacher that they had. I completely agree with you that teacher should not grade a paper on number of pages and topic choice. That is not assessing the students learning. that is just having them do busy work. I think that if we are going to assign writing assignments then we need to have clear expectations and provide feedback for the students with the grade that they received. I really like you plan about how you are going to leave feedback from the power point for the students.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned rubrics and feedback. For me feedback is really appreciated, even if I do well. I like to know what the teacher liked or thought I did well on it. I need to know why it was good so I could do it again.
ReplyDeleteRight now I am in a class that doesn't have rubrics for the assignment. I literally have no idea how he is going to grade the assignment and I don't have a checklist of things to make sure I included everything. I find that very important for students' success. Thanks for the post!
There is a lot I like about this posting, but I thought you brought up a good point that I didn't mention in the PowerPoint...it's important to allow students to express themselves through multiple representations, and not just through writing. When I taught middle school English, I actually found that if I let my students do things like write brochures with images, they actually produced more writing than the students who just wrote reports without images.
ReplyDeleteI think with history, there are so many neat things you can do, in terms of letting students make texts that combine music, photographs, writing, and so forth. I found this you tube video of a fifth-grade teacher who asked her students to read historical fiction novels, and then make a "digital story" using PowerPoint, and I was amazed at all of the work the students put into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uiel4VIMis&feature=youtu.be
In sum, I think multiple representations can be very motivating, especially because students now are so used to the visual cultures that are found online.
Thanks for your posting!