Friday, May 09, 2008

3 + 2*

Three more papers to read to be done with the "first pass" of grading. Really the first pass is the most significant pass. I read, I comment, and I make initial grade assignments (on a sticky). In the second pass, I really only check the papers I wasn't quite sure about.... However, this time, in my second pass this time I have to go through their evaluation of their paper (should be easy I hope and give them points for that). I have pretty good papers... I think there's only a couple of C papers... Mostly A and B ones. I'm thrilled... Oh, and one F ... the one who plagiarized.

What was she thinking???

I get to fill out plagiarism papers and turn them in on Monday. Fun fun.




Yesterday, I got to see a dear friend from college. I can't believe how LONG it's been since college. Good grief! I am old. It was lots of fun talking with her. I wish she lived closer. I really don't keep in touch with many friends from college... Only 2 or so on a regular basis (where regular basis equals more than once a year--am I pathetic or what?).




T (2.7) can spell her name. She's been doing that since right around the time she turned 2 I think.... Maybe 2.25, whenever, it's been a while. Tonight, I asked her how to spell her name and she spelled it WRONG.... Then she cracked up laughing. She was making a joke! To me, this is an exciting cognitive development.





Since the end of the school year is approaching, N (6) was tested by her teacher to see how she is reading. N is reading at the level expected by the end of first grade (N is in kindergarten)! YAY! We'll keep working over the summer. I'm thrilled she's a year ahead in her reading abilities. When a child falls behind in reading it has many negative ripple-effects through the academic career.




I'm so looking forward to my class being over, but I will miss a couple of things.... 1) I'll miss learning from the articles my students find. They often find NEW articles I haven't seen before, 2) they are often researching topics I wouldn't choose to research myself so I learn new things that I wouldn't seek out and find. 3) I'll miss the student who LIKE to learn. The ones who are really trying. It is fun to see them make progress!

Because of worrying how I'm going to miss out on the diversity of articles, MWH and I have decided to have article discussion nights. How geeky are we? We have to figure out the details, but maybe we'll each suggest an article and then read it and discuss... Maybe we'll take different weeks.... I will get to keep learning! In case you missed it, here's what MWH shared with me the other night. The genome of the platypus has been sequenced. How cool is that? A reptile-mammal... or a mammal-reptile, or a u-mammile (unique+mammal+reptile)?


*3+2 is the title because at first I thought I only had three topics to discuss, but then I had two more.... I wanted three in the title to indicate how many more papers I have to grade. There you go. Bonus topics!

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