third term final exams

The first graders did a fantastic job on their English Alpha test. The test was quite difficult, but many students did a great job. They also did fairly well on the Beta test and the Oral Communication test. Unfortunately, there's at least one question on the Beta test that was very tricky and my students are going to kill me when they find out that most of them missed it.

The second graders all did an awesome job on the Beta test. This term was unfortunately too easy. That will be fixed next year.

One problem was that last term, many of my second graders complained that the readings were too long and too difficult. At the beginning of this term, I assigned the students to read "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe. Unfortunately, nobody read it. Several started it but didn't finish it. Two looked it up online and read it in Japanese. The rest didn't bother. I figured that if my very hardworking second graders couldn't do it, nobody could. So I reorganized the curriculum.

MANY of my students (okay, MOST of my students) complained that Language Development was too hard. So, starting next year, Language Development will still be available, but it will no longer be for a grade. It will be for students who want to do it.

Some of my students complained that the class should be more difficult and challenging. I'm going to have a VERY long answer to that next term. The short answer is: very few of my NELP students read to their full potential this year. Too many of my students are not spending enough time on reading and are reading books that are too easy for them. Too many students are not actually reading their books. They're writing reports by flipping through the books. Too many students wrote book reports that only covered the first couple of chapters of their required reading. I'll have something to say about that before Spring Vacation.

This year was particularly disappointing for the plagiarism. I had a number of book reports that were plagiarized from Wikipedia or the review in Amazon. I had a number of reports that were plagiarized from wikipedia.

Hopefully next year I can make my students understand that THEY decide how difficult the class is,not me.

Date: 2011⁄03⁄12 22:30｜Permalink｜Author：nelp

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