"Thursday morning ends another dream...

...yesterday goes away, leaving only half a memory."

and so begins another day...on a much brighter note than the last couple of days have. Maybe because today is really "Friday" for me, as tomorrow Micaela and I depart bright and early to get our bus into London, where we are spending the weekend, starting with a Friday evening reception at the US Embassy and then sightseeing. If one cannot look forward to that with eager anticipation and a positive outlook, well then, its hopeless...which the future and the remainder of this exchange are not.

Today was a good day, beginning with a gift of wine and chocolate... what could be better than that???!!! There was also a dinner invitation for a few weeks out; a suggestion for a hair stylist in Peterchurch, which I could probably fit in on a day when Micaela is playing football, an invitation awaiting to visit Hay-on-Wye and invitations for Micaela to meet other teacher's children, walk dogs and see rugby games. There was even one teacher, who sought me out to apologize for not really having the time to talk in person, but that by reading my blog she felt she knew a lot about me already. I really appreciated that. Thank you everyone for your welcoming gestures of friendship...it is much appreciated and perhaps, like Micaela's state of mind, I won't want to go home at Christmas either!

It was a good day, but it wouldn't be complete without me forgetting some minor "administrative/clerical" detail... in this case the Thursday morning assembly for Form 7 - despite the giant post-it note staring me in the face from my computer screen, as I patiently waited for the registration list to appear on the screen. Yikes! No surprise though to my colleagues at home...I am notorious for forgetting class meeting days, staff meetings, etc... I am not good with the administrative duties of the job. AND- at home I rely an awful lot on the intercom system to just "call" the kids down to wherever they're supposed to be at whatever time they're supposed to be there. Funny how we get dependent on such things; plus my short term memory is definitely the first thing to go...

Today I tried a new lesson with my Year 10 students that I have never tried before, not even at home in America, which involved preparing the students to read the first two chapters of Great Expectations with a fine tooth comb, but in such a way that they will walk away from that room absolutely in love with Charles Dickens. (That may be a bit of an exaggeration,but one should never aim too low.) The overall aim is to conduct a Reader's Theater, reading with expression and dramatic effect, basically. It began with a lesson on inflection. One sentence with eight words on the board. Saying the sentence, with a different word emphasized, and figuring out the inferential meaning of the sentence. It was pretty funny when the students were reading it aloud. It didn't take long for them to catch on. I then split the group into smaller groups, handing each a reader's theater prepared script (thanks to the internet of course) and they rehearsed their stories...we used very silly stories that most were familiar with, but I threw in Casey at the Bat just for fun...and not surprisingly it turned out to be the most difficult piece to perform since the knowledge of baseball in America is not quite built up in their background. I will give kudos to that group (and maybe some house points as well to some of them) who really did try to give it a good go. Overall, they all performed marvelously.

However, the funny part of the process was when I gave each group a "rubric", which is like a mark scheme here in the UK. I explained it and how to use it to help them prepare their reading by aiming for the highest letter grade of A. When they asked if I was marking them I simply replied "yes." Now, it is interesting to note how seriously some UK students take their "marks". Unlike American high school students, who are quite accustomed to receiving a lot of marks of different weights and values over the course of a 12 week period, that is not how it works here- UK students create coursework assignments, usually one important assignment, for each unit of study they do and those are used as part of their overall GCSE assessment scores at the end of Year 11. BUT, when they thought I was actually giving them a "mark" for this assignment, they stepped up the seriousness with which they took the assignment.

The reaction of these students to the idea of being "marked" for this assignment, made me pause to ponder two things: would American high school students achieve more if they were assessed less? ...and also: would UK high school students achieve more if they were assessed more? or would they achieve less if they were assessed more? It's an interesting idea to ponder...it would make someone a great doctorate thesis. Both systems are so different, yet there are some similarities as far as the MCAS and GCSE testing are concerned. However, in American high schools we place a great amount of emphasis on all the parts leading to the whole, as one task leads to the next bigger task, which then leads to the next bigger task, which then leads to the most important task (homework - quiz - test - unit project) and I just wonder -

IF we only placed emphasis on THE MOST IMPORTANT task, would students achieve more and would we get a much more accurate picture of the student? OR...(like the exercise in inflection, depending on what word is emphasized, the same sentence can have eight different meanings, but still the words in the actual sentence don't change) is it best to have multiple levels of assessment and not place it all on one final assessment? Which method paints a clearer picture of the student's abilities? I'm not sure of this answer... and I look forward to experimenting with the idea a bit more. It's a brain twister though, ain't it???

Later, when they returned for their second lesson of the day, the performance lesson, I explained how the rubric would work in America, and how grading worked in America ( a condensed version of course). I explained how this particular assessment would normally count as a test grade in America because it was important enough to count as such. Finally, I revealed to them I was not really giving them a "mark" to count for their coursework, to which there were audible sighs of relief and much laughter. I did tell them we were going to use the rubric as a form of peer and self-assessment and they did like that. I also told them, that just for the fun of it, I would annotate the rubric with comments as I would normally do back home, and provide them with an American grade... that went over well.

So overall, it was good day...and you will all be happy to know that I am off line for the weekend! London here we come!

You may have noticed a theme to this week's posts. If you figure it out and can identify all of the allusions made this week let me know!

"Thursday morning and the trees are singing..."