So the semester is over and I am currently working on grade reports. I started working with the students on the wiki pages in my Non-Western Culture (7th Grade). We are working on Japan and we went as a class down to the new computer lab to start talking about the wiki. I set up accounts for each of the students and it really was pretty easy once I added the word griffin at the end of their first name and the initial of their last name (like: joesgriffin). I had divided the students into project and showed them how to set up the wiki. I showed them how to add videos, links, and pictures and to edit the text. After going through it a couple of times I let them just start to play. They leaped right in and immediately got started. The started grabbing things from all over the place. I had divided the students into groups that I knew would work well together, but showed them how they need to save their work so they do not over write each others work. One group decided to focus on sushi, another group on WW2, another group on the tsunami, and another one on ninjas. Some of the students just started putting additional random stuff they liked. It was a beautiful, amorphous mess. We only had about 10 minutes of them finding stuff and they did not want to leave when the bell rang.
The next day they came in and wanted to go back down to use the computers again. We could not use them but then something unexpected happened. I have two students who want to use their computer all of the time in class. Now that we have a better wireless system they are on them in class adding stuff to some of the lectures that I give whch is great. One of these students is very much a self starter who I really have to make sure to challenge, the other student is smart but hard to motivate. So both of them came in and said that they had spent some of the rest of the day adding links to the wiki so they could share them with the other students. It felt awesome seeing how excited they were and once I went on to see what they added it was great to see the results. They needed to tweak things a little bit and I am going to have to suggest to them that they organize the page a little more clearly so it is easier to follow but it was great to have such a buy in from the students.
This coming week I am going to try to set up the wiki for the 6th graders. I am once again going to not provide a lot of structure partially so they can play a little and get to know the system. So they will be focusing on the groups that came after the Roman Empire including the Franks, Germans, Vikings, Irish and Anglo-Saxons. We will have read the chapters from the book but this way they will hopefully be able to explore in a way that they are interested in and enthusiastic about.
In math, if I look at the progress of the students I am happy. The average grade for the second quarter was 85%. I think that that is the highest average I have had overall. I did stuff differently but my sense is that this has been a really good quarter. I am going to talk the students on Tuesday about what if any changes they think should be made to the class.
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