Action plan continues

Day 12, 12 April 2011
When I went for the class today, some students were busy writing their second drafts and some were filling up the self-assessment form. For a moment I felt annoyed that they were doing it at the last minute, but then I was happy to see them involved. Some of them requested that I give them 5 minutes so that they could complete. At least they were taking interest! So I encouraged them to quickly complete and submit the work. All I wanted was that they maintain their interest especially those who never cared about getting their worked checked. Once they all handed in yesterday’s work, I moved to the new lesson. This time it was easy as I didn’t need to explain much and students knew it was a similar task like the previous day. But then today I told them to spend 5 – 10 minutes separately on reading and interpreting the graph first and then another 20 minutes for writing. I had learned from the previous lesson that students needed more time to understand and write about the graph than I had initially planned. So today, I told them that they have around 30 minutes to complete the first draft. Meanwhile the students wrote their first draft, I decided to move around and see what they were doing. I knew this won’t be easy in fact; it will be quite tiring, but then I’d learn what each student was doing. I moved around and signed students’ first draft to ensure they were all doing the task. Also, if they had to take this task for home assignment (in case they couldn’t complete in the class), I wouldn’t mind as long as it is the same draft they submit to me later. I noticed that for some strange reason they all wanted to get their drafts signed. This is something that I had never seen in my previous writing lessons. Students who never cared about showing their work to me were now asking me to come and sign their drafts. A marked difference in their attitudes! Once they finished writing draft 1, they exchanged their work for peer review. After spending 10 – 15 minutes on peer review, I told them to complete the rest of the task at home and submit their work to me in the next class. In the last couple of minutes, I quickly asked if they were satisfied with peer feedback. Some students clearly said that the peer feedback of was not relevant as the mistakes pointed out were not really mistakes and so they decided for a second peer review. Once again I could see their serious attitude and involvement in the task. Good thing!