Project 3: C4T #4

For this C4T cycle, I visited the blog of a teacher named Henrietta Miller, of Sydney, Australia. There are several unique things about her classroom - for one, she teaches at an all-girls private school, according to her "About Me" page, and the fact that grades are not given in her Year 5 classroom - instead, they write comments to and about the students to help them learn more effectively, according to my assigned post, "To Grade or Not to Grade?"

I must interject here and say that I love it when teachers give comments, especially on things that are written - a note highlighting strengths and weaknesses is much more effective (in my not-so-humble opinion, at least on this topic) than a simple letter. Can they be used in conjunction? Certainly. But I don't quite see how A, B, C, D, and F cue students to learn.

Interestingly, students seem to want grades quite badly - probably, as she highlights, due to competitiveness and the fact that there may also be parental pressure involved. She also is letting students assist her in assigning their final grades by using a portfolio. How wonderful would it be if this type of behavior could become the norm (or at least acceptable) here in the States?

For my second and final week, I read a post called "Out of the Mouth of Babes", a post which chronicled the thoughts of 10-11 year old students on what they would change in the classroom if they were teaching.

The first one she posted kind of cracked me up, as students wished for more drama and art. It made me think of Ken Robinson's lecture, "Do Schools Kill Creativity", where he asserts that creative subjects should be taught right alongside math, english, science and other like subjects. It would be nice if there was time, wouldn't it?

Putting aside the more comical ones, students seemed to like interactive projects, such as one they did where they made movies about Math instead of simply doing problems. They also seemed to recognize that the standardized tests are a bit unnecessary. Smart children!