A slide show of several reflective comments from my class about their work in the first half of the course. This was used to discuss issues the students were facing and to spark collaborative decisions about the ways in which the class would run for the second half of the semester.
3. With more freedom comes more responsibility. What
are you looking forward to, and what makes you
nervous?
I'm looking forward to having a lot of freedom on the way you learn and how you learn it. Just with this
new freedom, I'm resistant of the choices I make for the text selection, topic choices, and the
activity/assessment design. I just don't want to change my mind in the middle of the unit and fall
behind. I just have to be careful early on and make the right choices. I'm also concerned that I
won't have the same question or topic as someone else.
As a student, I really enjoy having everything decided for me then just going to work. It was ideal for
me for the most part being given the supplementary texts, the standards, and the activities. It was
very easy and much less stressful to have these things decided for me. On the other hand, this
unit where we had the responsibility of deciding everything for ourselves had its positives and
negatives. The negatives were the extra work and decisions that had to be made and put in to
design activities and find supplementary text selections. However, the positives consisted of being
able to pick standards that would benefit me either with prior knowledge or to learn more than
other standards would supply, and designing activities that are the best for me concerning time
and accessibility.
I look forward to creating our own activities. I can design activities to improve places where I am
struggling
4. I like that it's very free and what each student gets out of the course depends on the seriousness they
take the course in and the amount of work each student performs. I like how this unit dwells more
on really diving into the text deeper and deeper, in way so that the reader can really appreciate
the meaning of the stories. Like for Grendel, at first I thought it was just a story about a lonely
monster, but after each activity I began to understand it and personalize it more and more, until
that original simple little story became a representation of life itself. I also like how it's a more
enjoyable course, for example instead of reading and analyzing becoming a dreaded thing to do
our class turns it into a class that is fun and interesting and full of discoveries.
One thing that I like about the course is how we do an activity based on a standard first to get
feedback before we recieve a grade on that standard. I like this because it gives us a chance to
improve our work before we are graded on it.
I like that we have such a variety of things to choose from to work on (In terms of rubrics). This allows
us as students to focus on what we want to focus on and develop our own plans for learning. I
think that this is a good aspect of the course because it gives us the ability to improve on our own
personal objectives instead of having to sit through an activity which we already feel like we have
mastered.
What do you like about the course
structure?
5. I like the fact that there IS structure so far, with the learning plans and activities and such. I feel like having the
learning plans, whether on paper or online, helped with keeping track of where I am and what I'm doing at
all times. I think that having the learning plans is very beneficial and really enjoy the way they are set up. I
feel as though it is very self-explanatory and very easy to follow.
At first, I was confused. I was unaccustomed to the idea in the first place, then I look at several complicated
looking rubrics in front of me and I became even more overwhelmed. Then after a week or two, it became
clear that it was simply a multi-step process that in turn would help strengthen independence within our
literary development.
I love the way that we are able to create activities on our own while and at our own pace while still having the
help of a teacher there to support us. There aren't many due dates so there is less pressure and it is more
free to delve into your own topics the way you chose to, which I feel develops better learning.
I really like the structure of this course because it is so easily mapped out. We know what we have to do, but
have a lot of freedom about how we go about it. This means that even though the same basic ideas are
carried throughout the course, there are so many different ways we can learn and practice them. Even
though it's the same, it's constantly changing so it doesn't get boring or repetitive.
I like the freedom we have been given. It gives me a sense of responsibility.
What do you like about the course structure? (cont.)
6. What would you change about the
course structure?
I think that the course should have a little more guide lines, like for the rubrics I think that
the class should go over the rubrics for each unit together and really emphasize what
are the requirements for each of the standards, so nothing is missed.
If I were to change one thing, it would be to add a little bit more structure to the course,
much like that of the first unit. I liked that unit because we all focused on the same
activities at the same times. This extra structure helped me to maintain my focus and
ultimately helped me to work more effectively.
I would like to use this course to improve my vocabulary and grammar skills.
I would like to read more books and focus at one at a time with less focus on the
standards because they can be boring and annoying doing the same ones over and
over again.
7. What would you change about the
course structure?
I would like to get rubrics back sooner, because once I complete the formative I often have no
idea how it is so i don't know what to change for the summative assignments - so the
formative grades don't really mean anything. However i love the formative/summative
system! I would just change it by getting general feedback on the formative activities faster
I would like more lessons where the teacher gives her insight along with the amount that we do
as groups. If there are more lessons where we get information from an expert, there might
not be as much confusion.
If I could change anything, I would probably want a little more silent time after we know what we
are going to do for the activities. I know I have plenty of class time to do them, but I often
find myself distracted when the class is too loud.
If I could change something about the course I would change the amount of essays we write. I
know this sounds surprising, but I feel like we need to write more essays that we work on for
a long period of time instead of timed essays. If we write more essays I will have a better
idea of what you like to read and improve my writing.
11. Additional Thoughts...
I feel like as a whole we should be graded on more things that would count. For
example, grades that could be fillers and bump up the grade, such as
grammar, or mini quizzes on the books we are reading.
We should definitely start a class-wide reading list.
English rocks!
