Parent/Teacher Conferences!
Wow! It's been a while since I have blogged. CI505 is off to a great start. We have been learning about metacognition and its potential impact on student learning. It's really interesting to "think about my thinking" as it relates to my teaching as well as my graduate coursework. All along, our professors in the program have been modeling metacognition by having us write reflective journals and participate in discussions. Then it finally hit me - blogging is really "metacognition" at its best! Posting my thoughts on my graduate program and my teaching experiences here on The Townsley' Tribune (T3 for future reference) is an excellent outlet for reflection.
Okay, back to the real reason for this post - Parent/Teacher Conferences. P/T Conferences happen at Solon High School four times per year. Because we are on a block schedule, students can potentially change classes every nine weeks, although most changes classes every eighteen weeks. Conferences gives Parents and Teachers an opportunity to talk about the students' performance in the classroom, upcoming tests and future course planning. The father of the student who is currently earning a 99% A in my Geometry class came to conferences. I've met his wife before, but never the father. I began by telling the parent how great it was to have the student in class and how he was grasping the Geometry concepts very easily. The father stopped me shortly into my rants and asked how his son was doing socially in the class - was he asking questions, getting along with others, working in groups when given the opportunity? I was absolutely shocked! So many times, I see parents too concerned about the grade and less so on their student's behavior. This was a pleasant surprise for me on what otherwise is a long Thursday evening.
I have been managing to keep up on my graduate work, too...
Dr. Ann Thompson has really done an excellent job so far in CI505 of creating assignments that combine theory learned in our coursework with practical classroom application. A great example of this was our pre-writing assignment. Every year in Personal/Business Math, I assign an "autoMATHography" assignment in which students write about their past, present and future experiences with math. I feel it really encourages students to think about math as being a part of their lives. The pre-writing assignment for CI505 gave me the chance to extend the assignment and assist students in organizing their thoughts before beginning their paper. Past experience tells me this is the most difficult part of the assignment so I was happy to have the opportunity to spend some time on improving it. I've decided to post my work here to illustrate how easy it is to use the program Inspiration as well as to showcase a bit of my graduate work.
Well, the snow has been shoveled for the morning, I'm wide awake on a Saturday morning, so I guess it's time to get back to my studies. This weekend's project is finalizing our digital story assignment. More to come when it is finished!
Comments
It sounds like the youth at Solon are blessed to have a good teacher. I never had such creative assignments in my 4 years of High School math.
The parent who talked to you about his son was very caring and
observational. One of the indicators that your son or daughter is not doing well, if if they withdraw socially...
Keep up the good work Mr. Townsley
Posted by: Pops | February 17, 2007 01:58 PM
Matt - I'll be interested in hearing more about your distance ed experiences. As you know I took many of my master's courses over compressed video at Western Illinois and there were times when the technology became transparent and I felt like I was in the same location, and other times where I wished I had driven the 90 miles to Macomb. There are the funny stories where conversations broke out at remote sites, with the remote site assuming that other sites (or the instructor) couldn't hear them. I heard stories too where a remote site just hit the "Freeze frame" button on their own camera and then proceeded to have a pizza party at their site. Good for social objectives and rapport, but maybe not so good for their educational objectives :)
Keep up the good work!
Shawn
Posted by: Shawn | February 21, 2007 08:27 AM