Reading Notes, Teaching Notes

Let me record a few teacher thoughts, in this morning where I look at the clock and see that my blogging time has almost disappeared.  But that's OK--I had offline journaling time, and poem composition time, and seminary writing time.

--One of my seminary classes has us do reading notes, which can be in any form we like.  We could annotate the text and upload our notes.  We could write summaries.  It can be anything, so long as we demonstrate we've read the text.  I am creating a Word Doc for each text and in that doc, I am writing the kinds of notes I'd make in the margins, and when the text will let me, I cut and paste the text that I would underline.  I enjoy this much more than I think that I will, if the text is good.  And it does force me to engage with the text in a way that I might not otherwise.  For example, I skim less.

--I'd like for my college classes to do this, but I shudder to think at how much they would want me to explain what I'm looking for.

--I did come across this website, which explains TQE, a process for having high school students engage with a text.  It seems very doable, and I will try it.

--In fact, maybe I'll try it on the day that my chair comes to observe me--even if it doesn't work, she'll be O.K. with that.  She'll like the small group work that I have planned.

--Would I be thinking this way if my chair didn't want me to choose an observation time?  Yes, but I might be less methodical.

--I am thinking about doing a whole different set of classroom activities for my English 100 class that meets Thursday afternoons.  I've been trying to keep the 3 sections doing the same thing each week, but next week, we'll diverge.  This Thursday class is the one that is most likely to careen into sullenness and eye rolling.  Let me try to nip this in the bud.  I will modify the tree module that I'm doing in English 101 right now.  It will get the students out of the classroom and engaging in new ways.

--My first thought when I thought about having one class be on its own schedule was to wonder how I will keep track.  But I'm having trouble now.  The Tuesday-Thursday class meets for 75 minutes, and they are so restless, ready to be done and to leave after about 20 minutes of class time.  Let me put them on a completely different schedule and see what happens.  I may save myself lots of time in not having to make notes about who has done what.