So it was a good day! Waaay better than the normal thrown rocks and flung burning torches. Or am I thinking of the old Frankenstein movie? (Ha! Second archaic movie reference of the post!)
In any case: today we started out with (another!) quiz on some genetics vocabulary. Goodness! And then, after a quick review of the best answers, we discussed WHY we are going to be quizzing quite so much in the near future.
The bottom line of that discussion is this: to have important and interesting arguments about WHY things happen, or trends in history, or themes in science, or even just plain old comparing and contrasting between various things, we need a basic understanding of the facts before we can apply those facts in an analysis or evaluation. In short, before we can master more complex things, we need to really know the more basic stuff. The main way people learn basic stuff and know it long term is through reading. This year, most of us are not reading as well or as fluently as in past years. So, rather than keep assigning essays that we are not, frankly, all that good at, we are going to take a step back and refocus on just KNOWING things. And, then, once we've really learned it, we can discuss it and write about it.
So, short term? Fewer CARs, more previews and SARs and quizzes. Lots of quizzes. because the other part of it is this. A ton of research shows that people remember things better when they spend time thinking about it...and short quizzes are way to get people thinking about things. I'm still doing some research, and I will be fiddling with the format in the classroom to find what works best, but review by short quizzes will be much more frequent.
Addendum: the goal of the quiz is not to give a grade. If I need to, I will, but! The main goal is to try to remember and think, and by thinking learn and remember. Grades are important, yes. Learning is more important.
Anyhow! We then moved on to talk about how to use and interpret Punnett Squares. In half our classes, the worksheet I handed out is due tomorrow. We will review it in class and take a short (yep!) quiz on it tomorrow.
As for Social studies, we are going to do some review over the Southern Colonies and New England before we move on, so hold off on the Middle Colonies text for now. The associated SARs will be due no earlier than Monday or Tuesday at this rate.
Ta!