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 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.
The Englishist 