My First Class Blog

Being so impressed at the personal growth I have experienced through the world of blogs, I made it a professional goal this year to try a class blog in my Grade 12 Advanced Functions course. I used Darren Kuropatwa's suggestions for setting up the blog and an article I found through Will Richardson's blog as my "first blog assignment"(more-less just to get the students on and me trying to figure out how it's going to work).

So far, everything has worked out pretty well. I am a bit disappointed by the spelling issues creeping up in the comments.

The article that I had asked students to comment on was a TIME article titled, "The Way We'll Work". I asked them to comment on how the article connects to how they will approach this course. As I read the comments, I feel some students are trying to write what they think I want to hear rather than really thinking about the greater connection.

I guess (hope) they're just testing me as well.

The String Game to Start

On the first day with my grade 9 applied class I used the "String Game" to begin. It was fantastic to say the least. In this fun game, I was able to do tonnes of assessment for learning. I was able to find out about student interests, how they felt about math, what their previous experiences have been and I also got an early glimpse into their personalities. This was all without any type of prompting. Will definitely do it again...