Chapter notes guides

 The curriculum I'm using (McGraw-Hill's Puntos de Partida) hinges upon students reading the textbook.  At first I cringed at this because I've heard that students just don't read the textbook.  

As a way to "encourage" students to read I went through and created what I call my chapter notes guides.  For each chapter there's a vocab notes guide and a grammar notes guide.  They're nothing fancy but they are intended to give students an active activity (writing) as they are doing a passive activity (reading).

These are in the modules section of my Canvas class.  The module says Ch ___ Getting Started and in the module there are 4 items:  the vocab notes guide, the grammar notes guide and the completed notes guides of each.  

In my online sections I tell them to print and use these as they read.  Through student feedback I see a correlation between students understanding what they're reading and filling out the notes guides.  I don't make it mandatory for online students to utilize these but maybe I will at some point in the future.

In my hybrid sections I print off the notes guide(s) needed for the next class and assign filling them out as they read.  I then give a participation grade while I do a quick check at the beginning of the next class.  I'm thrilled to say students are using these and they are coming to class prepared to use these concepts.  Grammar is going better than vocab.

This has been a rough semester.  I've had new curriculum and lots of curve balls with social distancing, students having to deal with self quarantining while staying on top of learning new material and just the unease many of us feel.

I'm at peace that these notes guides are at a starting place.  They are much, much better than requiring students to take quizzes in Canvas like I did last spring.  Many didn't do them so their grades were negatively effected (which didn't get their attention as I had hoped) and the quizzes didn't seem to accomplish keeping them accountable for learning the material before class.  Huge thumbs down.  I scrapped those when we moved online in spring of 2020.  Lesson learned.

Today I am choosing to stay home from church because I was exposed to someone with a positive test at work.  I feel great but don't want to risk exposing my church family.  I will watch the service online soon but I'm taking this time to do "brain work" while my loud children and equally distracting husband (but in a good way mostly) are gone.

I find that when I write these notes guides I am like my students, learning the material all over again.  I'm currently prepping for my 2312 which is semester 4 of Spanish.  I taught it for the first time last spring in a different curriculum but it's mostly the same material.  It's really complex grammar structures.  I know it, but it's been almost 20 years since I learned it.  It's funny;  I used these structures constantly when I taught bilingual children as we spoke in Spanish, but I haven't spent much time actually teaching these concepts.  Taking the time to really work through these concepts again is really helpful as I know I need to take ownership of teaching.  Also, I've seen in my online 2311 this semester that students need guidance on how to study grammar.  This is tricky stuff.

I view teaching students how to learn as a vital element of my job.  The challenge is that they have to actually do what I suggest.  It's tricky to know what to make optional and what to make mandatory.  I've decided that's the art of teaching and sometimes you get it right immediately and sometimes you have to modify and adjust as you go.  Also, what works for one student may not work for others.  One size fits all really doesn't apply to learning.