Today the honors classes got their Document Based Question tests back and many of them were discouraged. It is a new concept for the honors students and even though Mr. Carl told them that they should come in before Enrichment for help, only two out of both classes did. However, Mr. Carl and I both felt that it was important to give students the chance to redo questions they had scored poorly on so that they could move toward more mastery learning. If a student fails a test and then you move on, they obviously did not learn anything. I am not completely sold on letting them retake the test for the exact same amount of credit, but I do think it is important that they correct mistakes and learn the material before moving on. Especially with the DBQ tests, because it is a skill that is built upon over the year until they get to where they can write five paragraph essays for a document analysis question in preparation for the AP exam.
The Feel the History class started doing research and I could tell which groups were passionate and which ones are already starting to slack off. In a class like this, it is important that there is a lot of focus and drive to get the job done, since there is a lot of independent research.
I take over teaching the regular History classes tomorrow and I am feeling pretty good about my lesson I have for the next few days. I also ran an idea by Mr. Carl about giving the honors classes a project in an upcoming unit, but leaving up how they present/display the information or skill of what they know up to them. It is an idea I am working on and based on the hypothesis that when students are given the freedom to show you what they know by being able to display it how they want to, you will get a better end result. I am looking forward to working on putting that project together and starting to teach tomorrow.
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