Welcome back everyone! I am so excited to get going in grade 9.
I wanted to clarify a few things from the Meet the Teacher presentation:
1. Not everything we do in class will "get feedback." Sometimes, students will practice skills, or try something, or work on something collaboratively to explore a big idea or concept, that I won't give feedback on. I am always "assessing" students, and it doesn't always take the form of written feedback, but it often will. I assess by watching in class, having quick conversations, and observing collaboration and work habits; I will also be leaving specific feedback using the comment function in Google docs.
Speaking of Google docs, every student in my class has created a "Master Document." Think of this as a digital binder. This document is where they will keep all the work we do this year, which will take a variety of forms. This is their workspace, as well as a space for me to provide feedback, and it is NOT expected that parents spend much time in this document.
This year in grade 9 humanities, the students and I will work to focus on assessment of their "work" as a conversation between each of them and me, primarily, and at times their peers, and even sometimes their caretakers/guardians/ parents. In fact, the roots of the word "assess" tell us a lot:
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| Joe Bower's short piece on this fact is an interesting read. |
2. Parents should expect to hear from me once a week via the weekly email. If you want to know what your child is working on in more detail you can do a few things:
- check my Twitter account by following me @missg_teaches; I don't post daily, but I post about 1-2 times a week, and will post more often for special events (like Bamfield!); this is a good way to start a specific conversation rather than just asking "what did you do in school today?"
- check this blog; I post due dates and links to assignments in the pinned post that is always at the top of the blog, and then sometimes provide more details in the posts below; you can access this as much, or as little, as you want