Week 1 wins

I like taking Fridays to reflect.

For me, it's easier to disengage from work if I have closure.

I have a weekly to do list.  On it I have all the items I need to check off M-F in the first part but second part contains the items that need to be done eventually.

Everything from the first section is checked off.  Whew.

Wins from week 1:

I stopped using Zoom in my class lectures.  It was a headache and I'm not sure the students really utilized it.

I started making the PP slides for the lecture available on Canvas.  I upload them by 10am so my 10:30 and 1pm class can access them ahead of time if they want.  They can also access them after class.

3 students missed day 1 of class.  It was so nice to send them the pdf of the slides and tell them to see what we did in class.

I am uploading weekly songs for my 1411 online classes.

My F2F classes do weekly songs.  It feels unfair that the online sections don't get to benefit from them.  This semester I'll upload the weekly song video into the module as well as send out an announcement.  There won't be a grade connected to it (just like there isn't in my F2F classes) but this seems more fair.

I used Blooket.  Super fun.  The students really got into it.

I added Encouragement groups back to my F2F classes.  They play 4 corners to get to know each other just a bit and then form groups of 2 or 3.  They write their name and contact info.  The groups don't have anything to do with grades.  It's just a way to be connected to other students.

It was a great week.

Time for a restful weekend.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussing AI usage with students

Today in class we wrapped up Ch 1.  Ch 1 Quiz is later this week. I have found that many students have test anxiety.  I have weekly announcements I send out to my beginning classes that give study tips.  Hopefully this helps them feel more prepared as we go into quizzes and tests.  This point of the class is a natural time to discuss ethical usage of AI. Today we discussed ethical usage of AI with Spanish.  It was a great discussion.   A student pointed out it's helpful to use AI to make practice material to study.  This was new for me. I give them a chapter 1 summary that has everything on it.  In my mind, use that to study the material.  Make flash cards.  Practice them. I'm unsure how an AI can improve upon that, but if a student has found a way to learn the material, fantastic.
Read more

Amazing OER materials

As I'm building my Spanish conversation class, I'm thrilled that our librarian helped me find an amazing resource.  It's videos of Native-Spanish speakers telling about specific topics:  numbers, food, colors, etc.  The videos are very short and easy for beginning students to understand. They also already have CC in English and Spanish.  This resource is fantastic.   Hooray for wonderful OER resources!
Read more

Receiving feedback

 I'm in the process of creating my 5th class using OER materials.  Whew.  That's a lot. This time around, I'm creating a class I haven't taught before.  When I redesigned my 1411 class I had already taught it numerous times with 2 different curricula, both excellent.  I knew what the class should feel like.  I switched over to using different materials, but it wasn't really new to me.  The same was true for the other 3 classes I redesigned. This time around I'm creating a conversation class.  I'm at the point now where I have the scope and sequence complete and each chapter has a summary of the vocab we'll be studying.  I'm now building out the drill assignments.   When I build assignments I like to label them as "drill" or "apply."  With a drill assignment, students know they are practicing the information at a very basic comprehension level.   Today I wrote a drill assignment and just wasn't sure if it was good....
Read more