High School English Teachers please read (pretty please). (demand, writing, require)
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Perhaps you are not reading my post correctly, or perhaps I am not explaining myself. My son is used to his teachers TEACHING and he is used to learning new things. My son realizes that we are paying big bucks for a class that only expects memorization. At his public High School most of his teachers are very good, he thought that at the next level up he would learn more. He, in fact, can memorize things and got an A on his first test that was all about memorizing. It was the highest grade in the class. BTW, this is not an English class, it's an Information systems and technology class. The definitions are all things that he's learned in past classes or on his own.
In concordance with your last post "thinking and questioning" and IS don't really go together. Well there's troubleshooting and problem solving, but if your son wants that, have him study for the A+ cert or more importantly N+. IS classes are definition heavy, though I'm sure the problem solving stuff will come.
I'm sure the next class up from this current class would be right up his alley.
If not, check out other professors, take a look at their past or current syllabii(sp?) and transfer classes if he can.
Great post Ivorytickler. My son is taking a class at a local University and he told us yesterday that the Professor said that the next test will be on regurgitating definitions of words. My son is disgusted. This is a satellite campus of a well known college and the class he is taking is required for his intended major but he says he is learning nothing. He was not doing this class just to take up time. It's a disservice to the kids to just ask them to memorize words instead of having them think and question.
Yup. I want to know my students think so I'll be switching tests after lunch. I'm willing to bet $20 the class average doesn't climb after 3rd hour next time . It's very apparent that the kids in my later hours knew, exactly, what the questions were on the test. Details that were likely to be forgotten in my first hours were remembered in my later hours. These were the questions I expected to separate the A's from the B's.
Live and learn. Next time, at least, those questions will be different on the version of the test given to the after lunch crowd (lunch seems to be the dividing line). I thought having two versions in each class would be enough but, apparently not. So it will be different questions for the later test takers.
In concordance with your last post "thinking and questioning" and IS don't really go together. Well there's troubleshooting and problem solving, but if your son wants that, have him study for the A+ cert or more importantly N+. IS classes are definition heavy, though I'm sure the problem solving stuff will come.
I'm sure the next class up from this current class would be right up his alley.
If not, check out other professors, take a look at their past or current syllabii(sp?) and transfer classes if he can.
Son was taking this class to confirm his interest in the major and also to hopefully get the credit transferred to whatever college he ends up at. He takes the class on the College campus after HS two days a week. He's a HS senior. Here's the description of the class from the college handbook
The course employs an action-oriented approach. Students learn by doing—formulating and solving problems drawn from professional contexts, detecting and recovering from errors related to technology use, and locating, reading and studying materials that support their analysis and problem-solving. Students will accomplish this by participating in team-based learning. The course provides students with the opportunity to use, modify, and evaluate software to search for, frame, and express ideas with fluency. A variety of mechanisms are used to assess student performance.
If the class was actually taught the way it's described it would have been fairly interesting. The class started in late August so it's past time to change it. Oh well, we've told him that that's how it is sometimes. He's not happy but it's not the end of the world. He'll end up with a good grade and a class that should transfer to whatever college he ends up at.
Mommabear, I apologize for the apparent hi-jack of your thread. I'll stop now. I'm glad that you had the meeting with your son's teacher and the positive outcome.
Yup. I want to know my students think so I'll be switching tests after lunch. I'm willing to bet $20 the class average doesn't climb after 3rd hour next time . It's very apparent that the kids in my later hours knew, exactly, what the questions were on the test. Details that were likely to be forgotten in my first hours were remembered in my later hours. These were the questions I expected to separate the A's from the B's.
Live and learn. Next time, at least, those questions will be different on the version of the test given to the after lunch crowd (lunch seems to be the dividing line). I thought having two versions in each class would be enough but, apparently not. So it will be different questions for the later test takers.
I think this is a great idea. I tell my students to go ahead and try to cheat if they want to. I take cheating very seriously. I caught several with cheat sheets during the first term exam, and many others were upset to find that their answers, which were identical to their friends' answers, were wrong! This despite the fact that I told them that I give different tests that look identical at a glance. Next time there will be questions on the two forms such that if the student has the answer for the other form of the test, it will be automatically declared academic dishonesty and graded as such. I record a 02 to signal that in my gradebook. It helps me remember later in the year that the student was caught cheating.
For the last two years, I've had an answer key stolen that was left out by my computer during the semester exam. Last year it ended up xeroxed and passed around to any student who wanted it. Imagine the students' surprise when it wasn't the key to the exam they were taking! The upperclassmen tried to warn them, but they wouldn't listen. I can't believe that they would put more faith in an anonymous piece of paper than in themselves, but there it is.
I think too many teachers are complicit by not taking steps to prevent students from cheating successfully. Most of the teachers in my school give a single test, so the students are habituated to cheating. A few of us go to great lengths, and we are roundly resented for it.
I think too many teachers are complicit by not taking steps to prevent students from cheating successfully. Most of the teachers in my school give a single test, so the students are habituated to cheating. A few of us go to great lengths, and we are roundly resented for it.
Our students don't write papers on a regular basis, even in English class. Until a few years ago, it wasn't uncommon for them to never even do a research paper before graduation.
Turnitin.com can be a great tool. However, if your kids are accused of cheating you need to look very carefully at what they are accused of copying. When was in college (not long ago) I was writing a paper on music in biblical times.
One of the phrases in my paper was "......in the land of Canaan." Turnitin.com is written so that it examines 5 consecutive words to determine whether a phrase has been copied. Since I used this phrase multiple times it came up multiple times on my report. There was another phrase that kept coming up as well. It was 5 or 6 words that were innocuous but turnitin.com could find them on the internet.
Additionally, in that report I quoted some text from the Bible and those are not referenced with footnotes in the style we were usiing (Chicago) but are cited in the text of the paper. All those quotes came up as plagiarized making my paper look as if a fair amount of the paper had been plagiarized.
The professor grading the paper knew to check the phrases that turnitin.com turned up as plagiarized but I wonder if all users are aware that sometimes something that turns up as plagiarized may not really be plagiarized. It certainly had me in a panic.
Our students don't write papers on a regular basis, even in English class. Until a few years ago, it wasn't uncommon for them to never even do a research paper before graduation.
Your school has to subscribe, yeah. I find it dismaying that your students don't write on a regular basis. Yikes. Sorry...
Turnitin.com can be a great tool. However, if your kids are accused of cheating you need to look very carefully at what they are accused of copying. When was in college (not long ago) I was writing a paper on music in biblical times.
One of the phrases in my paper was "......in the land of Canaan." Turnitin.com is written so that it examines 5 consecutive words to determine whether a phrase has been copied. Since I used this phrase multiple times it came up multiple times on my report. There was another phrase that kept coming up as well. It was 5 or 6 words that were innocuous but turnitin.com could find them on the internet.
Additionally, in that report I quoted some text from the Bible and those are not referenced with footnotes in the style we were usiing (Chicago) but are cited in the text of the paper. All those quotes came up as plagiarized making my paper look as if a fair amount of the paper had been plagiarized.
The professor grading the paper knew to check the phrases that turnitin.com turned up as plagiarized but I wonder if all users are aware that sometimes something that turns up as plagiarized may not really be plagiarized. It certainly had me in a panic.
I don't know about all users. I know I scan the papers carefully for just that reason. Turnitin allows you to exclude quoted material and bibliography, so that certainly helps narrow it down quite a bit to the material that truly *is* similar.
Your school has to subscribe, yeah. I find it dismaying that your students don't write on a regular basis. Yikes. Sorry...
I share your dismay, but according to our administrators, all the students are on the college track, whether or not they are actually preparing for college in their classwork.
When I told my students this week that by their junior year of college, they would be whipping out 25-50 page papers several times a semester, they told me No Way.
As to the original point of having a pop quiz over assigned reading, I had my share in high school. I could usually pass if I had at least skimmed the reading. In college, the wake-up call came on my Western Civ midterm, when I had neglected to do the outside reading because it was never mentioned in class. I never made that mistake again.
High school teachers are usually trying to help their students get ready for the next level. Would you rather your son make a C in high school when he is preparing for college or a C in college because he wasn't prepared? A first-term C can easily be pulled up to a B, and possibly to a low A. Now he knows that he will have to adapt his approach to this class.
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. It's very apparent that the kids in my later hours knew, exactly, what the questions were on the test. Details that were likely to be forgotten in my first hours were remembered in my later hours. These were the questions I expected to separate the A's from the B's. 
