Sunday, December 14, 2008

This week's schedule

Planned (for most classes): 
Monday--Review
Tuesday--Quiz
Wednesday--Return quizzes, free day for the dozen students in the school

Reality: 
Monday--Late Start
Tuesday--I leave in the afternoon for eye doctor (current glasses are five years old), afterschool basketball teams, knowledge bowl teams, cheerleaders, and other students leave for Lakota Nation Invitational
Wednesday--Half-day for the dozen students in the school, still waiting for announcement on the school-wide freeday

The question:
My afternoon classes should be okay with the review/quiz schedule. 

My morning classes all fell behind schedule by at least two days last week. (Late start, testing, lockdown, assembly...) My tendency is to try to teach so we can be at a decent pause point as we begin the 2.5 week break. But I'm nervous about how many students won't be there. Know that I'll have to reteach anything after break anyway. Is it less wasteful of our classtime to give them the chance on previous concepts they haven't mastered?

4 comments:

H. said...

Difficult decision! If you think they'll retain enough over the break, it just might be more fun to preview new material and have them feel on top of the game and ahead of the class when January comes around - just for a change. Depends on who's there, I guess.

Loved your previous post, by the way :)

Sarah Cannon said...

Thanks H!

I think I'm going to do the new material. They're mid-investigation (though after 4 days without progressing we need to go back over everything) so the completion/preview seems more complete.

If you want to bring your grade up, talk to me and come in early tomorrow. (Assuming you can't stay afterschool tomorrow.)

Sarah Cannon said...

And...it doesn't matter.

At least for the day. We just got canceled. (We may be tough but you don't have students wait for busses when it's -19º with a windchill of -38º. Frostbite happens too quickly. And too few of our students have real winter clothes.)

So one day of school before students leave for LNI. Half day of who-knows-what. And that feeling of before the break chaos in the classroom, I keep feeling it get bigger....

Anonymous said...

oh, such a tough call. i always know how hard it is for students to come back from break to have to take an exam/quiz, but i don't think this is the case. either way, now you can concentrate on getting warm. been keeping tabs on the ridiculously cold weather there!