Oh my gosh...the last month or so has been such a whirlwind in school as well as my home life. I have two sons, aged 10 and 15 that are both involved in lots of activities in school and out so my free time is at a premium. Add to that, night time review sessions for the AP review sessions, Marzano (our evaluation model for the teachers) training, completing all of our paperwork and meetings for our year end evaluations, and lots of class coverages. Although June begins next week and for my AP students, the College Board exam is over, we are still plugging along in class.
The Academic classes have completed their research projects and are in the process of presenting them using web 2.0 applications. The AP students are in the process of reading a non-fiction historiography and writing their research papers. Grading research papers are unbelievably time consuming but every year I assign them anyway. There are just too many skills that need to be learned, practiced, and polished before I send these kids off to college--researching, evaluating sources, analyzing and evaluating evidence, proper citation, and thesis writing. My colleagues in the English department are usually finishing up with their papers by the time I get around to assigning mine so hopefully, they are have already practiced many of these skills already but it is important for them to be able to transfer their skills to other subjects as well.
Here's to June though and an upcoming summer...can't wait to record the last grades in my grade book and finally get back to the book I started to read during spring break. But first, there are 104 research papers that are calling to me.
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