It’s the last day of Slice of Life, and I’m going to have to make this fast because it’s 11:41 p.m., and I just got home, but I want to make the deadline.
Today was a beach-going adventure. It was nice outside, so instead of going to walk in the shopping district in my town, I decided instead to go to the beach. Because it’s the beach. I don’t think I need to explain.
I am in a mood, and it started last night, which is why I didn’t do a midnight post for today’s penultimate Slice of Life post.
I am also kind of at a loss for what to talk about. I am working through some things in therapy that are taking a lot of my energy. As a consequence, I don’t feel like talking about much of anything. I’m sick of talking about food and what I can and cannot eat. I don’t want to talk about grading. My students are both delightful and infuriating/frustrating, so nothing new there (and everything is as it should be). I don’t feel like being interesting or funny or pithy (or fill in the blank). I just want to sit on the couch and not do anything at all.
However, I did sign up for the challenge and, in the spirit of that challenge, here’s what I did today:
Two updates to yesterday’s post:
1. I got to page 176 of Station Eleven, so didn’t make it to the 200s. Oh well. I probably won’t finish it until this weekend.
2. I forgot to mention what I did about the students who were absent when we set up the groups. Basically, the students who were present and I decided the absent group members would just have to deal with the decisions made by their group.
Yesterday, I put my students into groups and had them work up their group contracts, which is what I want to talk about in my post. But before I get into that, I just want to share this absolutely brilliant moment that happened in class today.
So, I had my students do a self-annotation exercise, which involved many things, and one of them was double checking their Works Cited page. Two of the students in one of the groups had been absent the day we went over how to do the page, and another one had taken very good notes. Two of them had this exchange:
Especially posting.
I have a lot to say today since I introduced my students to the group contracts mentioned before and actually, finally wrote up the assignment sheet for their upcoming group assignment. However! It is late (12:18 a.m. as I write this) and I teach at 7:30 a.m., so I need to get to bed.
I will say that the group icebreaker was a success. I asked them to come up with three celebrities (dead or alive) they would want to help them rebuild after the apocalypse, and their answers were fun. Lots of groups picked Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson because he played lots of characters who had to survive. One group (of girls) picked him because he would be able to carry them if they got tired, which made me laugh.
I did write down most of their answers, which I will probably share tomorrow (or not–you know me), but for now, I away to bed. Anon!
I was going to say that maybe I had broken my March reading slump, but then I checked how many books I finished last March (five) and realized that I’ll probably finish five books this month. So I was just being dramatic as usual.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ah, yes, this was very good. As this was an audiobook, I should point out that I really enjoyed the narration.
I made a rule for myself not to grade on the weekend, but every once in a while, I get to a point where I decide to anyway. That’s what happened today. I had about five papers left to grade last night, so I decided to just get the rest of them done today.
Of course, about nine of my students didn’t turn in hard copies of their papers, so that’s a grading story for a different time. Sigh.
Right, so, Wednesday was also a good teaching day, but I got so distracted by the donuts that I didn’t talk about it.
First, we did an awesome self-annotation assignment that I stole from KO. My students were thoroughly engaged. The reflection question was “If you had 48 hours, what would would you change about your draft?” and they all answered, “I would fix it.”
A couple of students tweeted that it helped them a lot (although one said it reminded her of her high school class that she hated–sigh, you can’t win them all), so I am calling that a success.
Continue reading “Conversations with My Students: The Prequel #SOL18”
Today, I found myself thinking about the random things I share with my students and what prompts the sharing. We’re on week five of the semester, so getting to know each other better. The attendance rate in two of my classes is horrible (seriously, so bad), but that means there are a handful of students who show up consistently and so we have the intimacy of a smaller class even if the roster is pretty full.
It was raining today, so I told my first class all about my one sock that kept falling down and that rain kept getting in my (ankle-high) boots.
Oh! So, one student recorded my lecture from Tuesday, which I didn’t know. (His accommodation allows him to, but I told him to still let me know in the future because [a] it’s creepy that I didn’t know and [b] I need to know if I’m being filmed so I can make sure I don’t say anything that could get me in trouble.) We had this exchange as a result.
Y’all, I promise all my posts won’t be about food. But.
So, today, I went down the hall to ask my coworker a question. I knocked on her door, and, as soon as she opened it, she said, “I want a donut.”
Now, this is a fair greeting. I often want donuts. Unfortunately for both of us, I could be of no help to her in her quest since I (a) had none and (b) knew not where she could find any.
Then, a little later, I heard her yell, “WHO IS GOING TO GIVE ME A DONUT?”
The Englishist 