Class Assignment Expectations

When students are doing their ‘seatwork’ assignments there is a wide variety in the final outcome of what each student will produce.  There are, of course, different learning outcomes for different subject areas; just as there are different levels of expectations for each grade.  I use this visual to explain the difference between a minimal effort and one that has met all the expected criteria.  This idea is used for all areas of our curriculum – not just their artwork – and visually demonstrates what is meant by including ‘details’.  For artwork they can see what is meant by ‘details’ through the gradually more developed pictures.  In their written work, students are reminded that ‘details’ are the way their writing has answered the reader’s questions of ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘how’.

We are going to ‘go batty’ . . .

Today we launched our new science based theme – bats!!  We began by recording what we KNOW (or think we know) about bats.  I asked the students for their input and wrote out their responses on chart paper.  There were no ideas left out (right or wrong).

We then made a similar chart paper with the things that we WONDER about (i.e. our questions about bats):

We are all looking forward to learning more about these fascinating animals!!!  We will keep you posted.