Students, ALL homework links are on the Boyd7science homework page and on Google Classroom page.
Monday we will begin our new project with our driving question, problem statement and knows and need to knows. Our driving question is "How can we educate our community on the effects of erosion?"
Tuesday there will be a flipclass assignment that will be due on Thursday. This can be done at home, in the mornings at tutorials, during 5th period tutorials, (maybe) in class. There isn't always classtime to work on it. It is supposed to be considered homework and it is used to reinforce what we are studying. It may be a google form or a google doc. The instructions for turning in a google doc are on the homework page. The students are aware of how this works as well.
We grade notebooks weekly. Daily we go over test questions and why they answered what they did. The students are responsible for getting everything written in their notebooks. The page # is posted daily for them when writing their bellringers and the table of contents with page numbers are posted in the classroom.
I am experimenting with redos in my class. I started seeing a trend of missed comprehension in the questions that they were answering after reading. My goal isn't to "catch" them and count items wrong, it is to ensure they are reading and understanding what it is that we are talking about. So, I made everyone who didn't master the questions, partner up, read the article out loud and then analyze the questions. That made for some good conversations. It did work and all grades improved. In the questions I noted that there is a huge misconception for them that erosion and weathering are the same. We are focusing heavily on that.
We have started using our online techbook through Discovery Education. This will also go along with what we are studying. It will include reading passages and videos.
I'm still trying to convince them that they don't need to ask me if "this is right?". They do need to discuss with their groups, they do need to follow directions, they do need to read the instructions. Slowly but surely, we are trying....